The Hindu : BJP finalises first list for Madhya Pradesh

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 04, 2003

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National

BJP finalises first list for Madhya Pradesh

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI NOV. 3. The Bharatiya Janata Party today declared the names of its candidates for 139 of a total of 230 Assembly seats in Madhya Pradesh while trying hard to arrive at some understanding with the Samata Samaj Party of Phool Singh Baraiya who had broken away from the Bahujan Samaj Party to form a separate party five days ago.

Although, officially, the BJP leaders have said that they were not looking for any alliance in any form, Kailash Joshi, president of the Madhya Pradesh State party unit, told The Hindu that "for reasons of strategy we have not declared candidates for more seats today... we are in touch with Baraiya... if something works out we could leave seats for him.''

The biggest surprise for the ruling Congress is that the BJP has decided to challenge the Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, in his constituency, Raghogarh. The party's general secretary, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, will contest against him and the BJP leaders have pointed out that he will "tie him down to this constituency'' as Mr. Chauhan can be sure of some 30,000 votes of his own community while the party's chief ministerial candidate, Uma Bharti, could attract the roughly 20,000 backward caste votes.

However, reacting quickly to the BJP's decision, Mr. Singh welcomed the "challenge'' in the form of Mr. Chauhan who has been a youth wing leader of the BJP. "He is most welcome,'' Mr. Singh said with a smile.

Ms. Bharti herself will contest from Bada Malara in Chattarpur district, the general secretary in-charge of elections, Pramod Mahajan, said.

The constituency is not part of the two parliamentary constituencies Ms. Bharati has represented — earlier Khajuraho and, currently, Bhopal. Clearly, there are good reasons for her not wanting to contest from a segment of her own constituency. Apparently, to prevent faction fights from breaking out — the party has been able to put up a united show in the State so far — all the 58 sitting MLAs in the 139 seats for which candidates were declared today have been accommodated with a few allowed to change their constituency. Mr. Mahajan said the central election committee meeting chaired by the party president, Venkaiah Naidu, at the Prime Minister's residence here today cleared the list.

He was confident that the rest of the Madhya Pradesh list, and candidates for Rajasthan and Delhi, would be cleared tomorrow and the day after.

All the names declared today were "unanimously recommended'' by the State election committee, making the task of the CEC that much easier, Mr. Mahajan added.

A notable absentee at the meeting was the former BJP president, Kushabhau Thakre, whose writ has run in the party in the State for over 50 years, since its Jana Sangh days. "Ill health'' was cited as the treason for his absence.

A big lacuna in the list — which the party has promised to fill in the subsequent list — is that very few women have been nominated.

Only nine women candidates, including Ms. Bharti, figure in a list of 139, but there are 24 Scheduled Castes and 29 Scheduled Tribes candidates.

The Prime Minister's nephew who is a sitting MLA, Anoop Mishra, has been allowed to change his constituency from Lashkar West (which he currently represents) to Lashkar East (which he will contest); Mr. Kailash Joshi's son, Deepak Joshi, has been accommodated in Bagli, the former Chief Minister, V.N. Saklecha's son, Om Prakash Saklecha, has been given the ticket from Javad, while the son of the former MP, Laxminarain Pandey, Rajendra Pandey, has been cleared as the party candidate from Jawara. Apparently, this was part of the exercise for peace making among different groups.

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