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BJP fields Kailash Joshi from Bhopal

By Our Staff Correspondent

BHOPAL, MARCH 23 . The president of the State unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Kailash Joshi, has been chosen as the party candidate for the prestigious Bhopal Lok Sabha seat, which is considered a BJP citadel.

The Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Uma Bharti, was representing the constituency in the dissolved Lok Sabha.

The BJP had taken a lead in the ticket distribution exercise in the run-up to the polls by clearing the candidature of the Union Ministers, Satyanarayan Jatia from Ujjain, Sumitra Mahajan from Indore and Phaggan Singh Kulaste from Mandla. This was followed up with the announcement of candidates for 20 of the remaining 26 parliamentary seats on March 15.

Besides announcing Mr. Joshi's candidature from Bhopal, the BJP has also set at rest all speculations on the Rajgarh seat by allotting it to Laxman Singh, the younger brother of the former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, who was the Congress MP from there before he shifted his loyalties to the saffron party. There was some opposition and resentment over the prospects of Mr. Singh getting the BJP ticket especially from the "BJP cadres in the Rajgarh area''.

Even the State BJP General Secretary in-charge organisational affairs, Kaptan Singh Solanki, had recently said that the party leadership would be consulting the cadres at all levels before finalising the ticket for the Rajgarh seat.

In a surprise move, the BJP has changed the candidate for Damoh seat. Ramkrishna Kusmaria was representing the seat in the dissolved House and his name had figured in the list of candidates announced earlier. However, he has now been shifted to Khajuraho, where he would be locked in a triangular contest with the AICC spokesman, Satyavrat Chaturvedi and Ashok Vir Vikram Singh "Bhaiya Raja'' of the Samajwadi Party.

The candidates for the remaining seats announced today are Harivallabh Shukla (Guna), Ganesh Singh Patel (Satna), Nandkumar Singh Chauhan (Khandwa), and Chandra Bhan Singh (Damoh).

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