BJP declares 92 more candidates in Madhya Pradesh; two more seats to be finalised

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday released its fifth list of 92 candidates for the Madhya Pradesh Assembly election slated to be held on November 17.

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday released its fifth list of 92 candidates for the Madhya Pradesh Assembly election slated to be held on November 17. With this, the party has declared its candidates for 228 of the 230 constituencies in the State; names for two seats — Guna and Vidisha — are yet to be finalised.

The announcement comes after the BJP’s central election committee met on Friday night to discuss the candidates. Chaired by the party’s national president, the meeting was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, and State BJP chief V.D. Sharma, among others.

The party had earlier declared candidates for 136 constituencies, with its first list of 39 candidates out as early as August 17. The contest between the BJP and the Congress is now clear in 227 seats, as the Congress has also announced candidates.

A BJP leader said that discussions on names for the Guna and Vidisha seats were still ongoing. Mr. Chouhan, who was an MP from Vidisha between 1991 and 2005, has a direct stake in Assembly seats within that Parliamentary constituency, he said.

Unlike in its previous lists, the party has not named any MPs or national leaders as candidates. In earlier lists, the party had sprung a surprise by fielding three Union Ministers — Narendra Singh Tomar, Prahlad Singh Patel, and Faggan Singh Kulaste — as well as four MPs, and one national general secretary, Kailash Vijayvargiya.

The BJP has denied tickets to 29 sitting MLAs, including three sitting Ministers, in the fresh list.

While Mr. Kailash Vijayvargiya was fielded from the Indore-1 constituency, his son and sitting MLA from Indore-3, Akash Vijayvargiya, did not feature in the fresh list. Instead, the party has fielded Rakesh Golu Shukla from that seat. In 2020, Mr. Akash Vijayvargiya had been accused of assaulting a municipal official with a cricket bat in Indore. The BJP had then issued him a show cause notice.