Cong fields Kamal Nath from Chhindwara, TV actor Vikram Mastan against CM Chouhan from Budhni
Bhopal: Resting the speculations over the contesting Assembly elections of Kamal Nath who is considered the Chief Ministerial face, Congress on Sunday declared his name for the Chhindwara constituency in its release of the first list of 144 candidates for the November 17 Madhya Pradesh polls in a single phase.
Congress fielded against Chief Minister Shivraj Singh in Budhni constituency to actor Vikram Mastan who has played the role of Lord Hanuman in the Ramayana TV serial. Mastan hails from Budhni. Similarly, Sanjay Shukla, a sitting MLA, and Lakhan Patel were given tickets against Union Minister Prahlad Patel, senior BJP leader Kailash Vijayvargiya and state Home Minister Dr Narottam Mishra from Indore-1, Narsinghpur and Datia seats, respectively.
Taking forward the commitment of giving reservations for the OBC category if Congress voted to power, 39 candidates have been included from the classes in the 144 candidates list. Around 55 per cent of the population of the OBC community is in the state.
Congress announced 19 women candidates surpassing the ruling BJP while the Saffron party has fielded only 17 female nominees in the released list of136 names so far. Giving a message to the youth of the state, the grand old party fielded 65 of this section who are less than 50 years of age.
Notably, the name of the former Assembly speaker and several times MLA, N P Prajapati was denied a ticket from his traditional SC reserved seat Gotegoan, Shekhar Choudhary was fielded in place of his. The tickets of two other sitting MLAs Tamlal Sahare from Katangi and Shivdayal Bagri from Gunnaur seats were dropped. It indicates that the party’s survey has been given priority in the ticket distribution.
69 sitting MLAs have succeeded in getting tickets including those who have been Ministers in the 15-month-long Nath-led government such as Dr Govind Singh (presently LoP), Sajjan Singh Verma, Kamleshwar Patel, Jaivardhan Singh, Umang Singhar, Vijaylaxmi Sadhao, Bala Bacchan, Jeetu Patwari, Sachin Yadav, Tarun Bhanot, Lakhan Ghangoria, Omkar Singh Markam, Lakan Singh Yadav, Harsh Yadav, Hukum Singh Karada etc.
Even though the BJP has been targeting Congress over nepotism, Digivjaya’s son and brother and Govind Singh’s relatives Rahul Bhadouria and Chanda Singh Gaur were given tickets.
In the list, 47 tickets were given to general categories, 39 for OBCs and 6 for the minority classes including Arif Masood from Bhopal-middle seat and five for Jain community. 30 tickets were declared on Scheduled Tribes reserved seats out of a total of 47 and 22 for SC reserved seats out of 35. A total of 230 seats are in the state Assembly.
Former Union Minister Kantilal Bhuria who is the sitting MLA from Jhabua ST reserved seats was replaced with his son Vikrant who is the president of the party youth wing of the state unit.
Interestingly, sitting MLA KP Singh alias Kakkaju was given a ticket from the Shivpuri constituency instead of his traditional Assembly segment Pichhore, he has been a six-erm legislator from this seat.
MLAs who were given tickets are Sanjay Sharma from Tendukheda, Laxam Singh, Pravin Pathak, Satish Sikarwar, Suresh Raje, Ghanshyam Singh, Babu Jandel, Baijnath Kushwaha, Gopal Singh, Sanjay Yadav etc.
Congress also given chance to senior party leaders Ramniwas Rawat, Mukesh Nayak, Ajay Singh Rahul etc. The Party also fielded new faces in bulk.
