MP election updates: BJP releases second list of candidate, AB Vajpayee’s nephew Anoop Mishra gets ticket

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan has filed nomination from Budhni constituency. Budhni is Chouhan’s home turf and is close to his ancestral village Jait. He was first elected as MLA from Budhni in 1990 beforebecoming MP by winning a bypoll from the the Vidisha Lok Sabha seat in 1991 after former Prime Minister Atal Bihrai Vajpayee quit the seat. Chouhan went on win the Vidisha LS seat in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004. In 2005, Chouhan took over as MP CM and in 2006 contested from Budhni to get elected to the MP Assembly. He beat the Congress’ Rajkumar Patel, a former minister, by a margin of 36,000 votes. He won from the seat again in the 2008 and 2013 Assembly polls, defeating the Congress’ Mahesh Singh Rajput and Mahendra Singh Chauhan by a margin of 41,000 votes and 84,000 votes respectively.

The Madhya Pradesh Congress has announced its second list of 16 candidates for polls to the 230-member state assembly slated for November 28. The names of Congress state unit chief Kamal Nath and poll campaign committee in-charge Jyotiradtiya Scindia are not on the list. They are touted to be frontrunners for the chief minister’s post if the party wins.

Just a few days ahead of the Assembly polls, former Congress MP from Madhya Pradesh Premchand Guddu has joined the BJP. Guddu was inducted into the BJP on Friday in the presence of union ministers Narendra Singh Tomar, Thawarchand Gehlot and BJP general secretary Kailsh Vijayvargiya. Guddu had won from Ujjain in 2009 but lost the elections in 2014 to BJP’s Chintamani Malviya.

Congress Saturday released its first list of 155 candidates for Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls. “Announcement regarding party candidates for the ensuing elections to Legislative Assembly of Madhya Pradesh,” Congress tweeted.

Digviajaya Singh, Jyotiraditya Scindia fight over ticket distribution: Report The Congress is reportedly in the midst of an intra-party rift over the distribution of tickets. With less than 10 days left for the nominations, the Congress is yet to announce even a single candidate. There are reports suggesting all is not well for the Congress between the top leaders and their supporters. As per an India Today report, Digvijaya Singh and Jyotiraditya Scindia had an intense verbal spat in presence of party president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday.  – Digvijaya Singh has denied any confrontation with Scindia. 

BJP releases first list of candidates out; Chouhan stays in Budhni

– The BJP Friday released its first list of 177 candidates for the Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls, dropping over two dozen MLAs and fielding Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan from his traditional Budhni seat.

– Three ministers are among the MLAs who have been denied renomination, while seats of several legislators of the ruling party have been changed. Three sitting independent MLAs have been fielded as BJP candidates from their respective constituencies.

– The list was released in New Delhi by Union minister J P Nadda, who is also secretary of the BJP’s Central Election Committee.

The seats where the sitting MLAs have not been given tickets by the BJP include Sabalgarh, Sumaoli, Gwalior (East), Sewda, Guna, Surkhi, Tikamgarh, Prithvipur, Malahra, Hatta, Gunnor, Rampur Baghelan, Simaria, Teothar, Deosar, Junnardeo, Jaisinghnagar, Aamla, Ghodadongri, Sanchi, Vidisha, Ashta, Agar, Mandhata, Pandhana, Maheshwar, Sardarpur and Dharampuri.

The Congress accused the BJP government in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh Friday of furnishing inflated figures of agricultural production to get the Union Government’s `Krishi Karman Award’.

According to party sources, Chouhan has nurtured Budhni well with his wife, Sadhna Singh, and son Kartikey taking charge of the campaigning. Kartikey has been touring and addressing meetings in Budhni for the part 3-4 years to maintain a connect with the people of the constituency. Kartikey was in the news recently after Congress president Rahul Gandhi inadvertently linked his name to the Panama Paper leak after which the former filed a defamation case at a Bhopal court.

PTI

Budhni, in the state’s Sehore district, is Chouhan’s home turf and is close to his ancestral village Jait. He was first elected as MLA from Budhni in 1990 before
becoming MP by winning a bypoll from the the Vidisha Lok Sabha seat in 1991 after former Prime Minister Atal Bihrai Vajpayee quit the seat. Chouhan went on win the Vidisha LS seat in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004. In 2005, Chouhan took over as MP CM and in 2006 contested from Budhni to get elected to the MP Assembly. He beat the Congress’ Rajkumar Patel, a former minister, by a margin of 36,000 votes. He won from the seat again in the 2008 and 2013 Assembly polls, defeating the Congress’ Mahesh Singh Rajput and Mahendra Singh Chauhan by a margin of 41,000 votes and 84,000 votes respectively. 

PTI

Among the chief minister aspirants from both the BJP and Congress in Madhya Pradesh, only incumbent CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan will contest Assembly polls scheduled for November 28. Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia, both considered claimants to the coveted chair, are Lok Sabha MPs and are unlikely to contest the polls. State Congress unit president Nath is a nine-time MP from Chhindwara while the party’s campaign committee chief Scindia represents Guna in the Lok Sabha. “So far, there is no chance of Scindia and Nath contesting Assembly polls,” a Congress spokesperson told PTI.

Last Date of Nominations: November 9, 2018 (Friday)

Date for Scrutiny of Nominations: November 12, 2018 (Monday)

Last Date for withdrawal of candidates: November 14,2018 (Wednesday)

Date of Poll: November 28, 2018 (Wednesday)

Date of Counting: December 12, 2018 (Tuesday)

Asked about the issue, AICC general secretary Gehlot denied reports of any differences between the leaders and claimed that the party leadership in Madhya Pradesh was united. “There was no such fight between the leaders as reported in a section of the media. All the leaders in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are united,” he said. Gehlot said lengthy meetings of the CEC have taken place to ensure that the candidate selection process ends soon.”Long meetings are taking place to speed up the selection process for candidates,” he said. Singh also rejected reports about any differences with Scindia or any argument with him in Gandhi’s presence.

Religious leader and for minister in MP Cabinet, Computer Baba, a friend-turned-foe of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan, has been expelled by the `Akhada’ to which he belongs. Digambar Ani Akhada, a prominent denomination of Vaishnava sect, has expelled him, said Mahant Narendra Giri, president of the Akhil Bharatiya Akhada Parishad, Thursday.

PTI

Two days after the Congress announced the induction of former BJP leader Gulab Singh Kirar into the party in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, the opposition party ‘disowned’ him Thursday after realising that it had targeted him in connection with the Vyapam scam earlier. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is watching with glee the Congress’s discomfiture over Kirar, an Other Backward Classes (OBC) leader, in the run-up to the high-stakes Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls, scheduled to be held on November 28. The saffron party said Kirar had no association with it and his cross-over to the Congress will have no bearing on it. On October 30, the Madhya Pradesh unit of the Congress had announced the induction of Kirar into the party in Indore in the presence of party chief Rahul Gandhi and other leaders.

Insiders say a third meeting of the CEC, the party’s body for selecting candidates, for Madhya Pradesh to be held this evening was cancelled as no consensus could be brought about between the various state leaders over party tickets. The meeting is now likely to be held on Friday. No candidate has been announced for the state polls.

PTI

BJP has dropped as many as 27 sitting MLAs from the first list in Madhya Pradesh. The state will go on Assembly poll on November 28. Results will be declared on December 11.

The list was finalised at the BJP’s central election committee meeting last night. It was chaired by party president Amit Shah and also attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi among other party leaders.

Apart from Madhya Pradesh, BJP has also announced candidates for 28 Assembly seats in Telangana and 24 in Mizoram to. While Telangana will go on polls on December 7, Mizoram will go on November 28. Results will be out on December 11.

The CEC meeting for Madhya Pradesh remained inconclusive after it continued till hours beyond midnight. This was followed by a meeting of the leaders from Madhya Pradesh and the central screening committee of the state chaired by Madhusudan Mistry with Ahmed Patel, Ashok Gehlot and M Veerappa Moily.

PTI

The Bharatiya Janata Party, led by CM Shivraj Chouhan, is on a mega campaign spree under the ‘Jan Sampark Yatra’. Check the third part of the BJP list below:

Senior Congress leaders have been entrusted with the task of sorting out differences between party leaders from Madhya Pradesh over allotment of tickets for the November 28 assembly elections as talks at the central election committee meeting remained inconclusive, PTI sources said Thursday. According to the PTI sources, during the meeting of the central election committee on late Wednesday, Congress leaders Digvijaya Singh and Jyotiraditya Scindia exchanged heated notes in the presence of party chief Rahul Gandhi.

The BJP Thursday released its first list of 177 candidates for the Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls. The list was released by the party’s secretary election committee and Union minister J P Nadda Friday. According to PTI sources, about 27 sitting MLAs have been dropped in Madhya Pradesh.

Check the first list of candidates declared by Bharatiya Janata Party for the Assembly elections. The party has declared 177 candidates including CM Shivraj Chouhan and other senior ministers.

Check the first 25 candidates declared by Bharatiya Janata Party for the Assembly elections. The party has declared 177 candidates including CM Shivraj Chouhan.

Digvijaya Singh’s Tweet: “It is being wrongly reported in press that I and Jyotiraditya Scindhia ji had any arguement and Rahul ji had to intervene. All of us in MP Congress are one and determined to defeat the corrupt BJP Government in MP”