[ad_1]
Madhya Pradesh is set for a high-octane electoral contest on Friday as 2,533 candidates will fight for 230 seats in the assembly. The central state will witness a direct contest between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress.
The saffron party will hope to retain the state it wrested from the grand old party in 2020. The Congress would look to repeat its 2018 success and come to power with a bigger margin to bolster its prospects ahead of 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Madhya Pradesh sends 29 members to the Lok Sabha.
Polling will be held from 7 am to 6 pm in all the assembly segments except in Baihar, Lanjhi and Paraswada seats in Balaghat district, 55 booths in Mandla district’s Bichhiya and Mandla seats and 40 polling stations of Dindori district, all Naxalite affected, where voting time is 7 am to 3 pm, Madhya Pradesh’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Anupam Rajan said.
Madhya Pradesh Assembly Elections 2023 Full Coverage
A total of 64,626 polling stations have been set up in the state. Among these, 64,523 are main booths and 103 associate (sahayak) stations, where number of electors is more than 1,500, Madhya Pradesh’s chief electoral officer Anupam Rajan told PTI.
As many as 5,60,58,521 voters, including 2,87,82,261 males, 2,71,99,586 females and 1,292 third gender persons, are eligible to exercise their franchise.
The big Madhya Pradesh battle will witness some high profile candidates and constituencies.
Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Budhni)
Fondly revered as ‘Mamaji’, the 64-year-old BJP leader served as the chief minister from 2005 to 2018, and then from 2020 till date. Chouhan is contesting his sixth election from stronghold Budhni, the seat he won for the first time in 1990. In the 2018 election, the CM had won with a margin of 58,999 votes defeating Congress’s Arun Yadav. The victory margin had dipped from 84,805 votes in 2013.
This time, Chouhan has been pitted against Congress candidate Vikram Mastal, who is a television actor and had portrayed lord Hanuman in Anand Sagar’s 2008 television show Ramayan.
Narendra Singh Tomar (Dimani)
Five months after he was appointed as the BJP’s election management committee for the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls, Narendra Singh Tomar is among the three Union ministers in the poll fray. The 66-year-old leader will contesting the poll from Dimani. The seat was won by the Congress in 2018 election.
“The party high command had sounded off MPs and ministers to be ready for elections. Some of the ministers who are Rajya Sabha members have also been asked to prepare for elections,” a BJP functionary had told HT on condition of anonymity.
Prahlad Patel (Narsinghpur)
Prahlad Patel, Union minister of state for food processing, will contest from Narsinghpur. In 2018 assembly election, BJP’s Jalam Singh Patel had defeated Lakhan Singh Patel of Congress by a margin of 14,903 votes.
Faggan Singh Kulaste (Niwas)
Union minister for state for rural development Faggan Singh Kulaste will fight the elections from Niwas, a seat reserved for scheduled tribes (ST). In the 2018 elections, Dr. Ashok Marskole of the Congress had won the seat by defeating BJP’s Rampyare Kulaste by over 28,000 votes.
Kailash Vijayvargiya (Indore I)
BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya has been fielded from Indore 1 seat. The seat was won by Congress’s Sanjay Shukla in 2018. Having started his political career with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, Vijayvargiya has won the state elections six times. He had also assumed the responsibility as BJP in-charge in West Bengal for the assembly election in 2021, where the saffron party won 77 seats.
Kamal Nath (Chhindwara)
Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath will be contesting from Chhindwara. He had won the by-election in 2019 by defeating BJP’s Vivek Sahu by over 25,000 votes, months after he was sworn in as the chief minister. A nine-time Lok Sabha MP, Nath had led Congress to victory in the 2018 elections, in which the grand old party had won 114 seats. However, his stint as chief minister was cut short in just 15 months, following rebellion by 22 Congress MLAs who defected to the BJP.
Jaivardhan Singh (Raghogarh)
Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijaya Singh’s son Jaivardhan Singh is in fray from his family’s stronghold Raghogarh. The Singh scion had won this seat in 2018 by a huge margin of nearly 47,000 votes.
Jitu Patwari (Rau)
Former Madhya Pradesh minister Jitu Patwari will be contesting from Rau seat, that lies in Indore Lok Sabha constituency. In 2018, he had won the seat by defeating Madhu Verma of the Bharatiya Janata Party by a margin of 5703 votes.
[ad_2]
Source link
