BJP releases first list of 21 candidates for Chhattisgarh polls, 39 for MP elections

The party has fielded Vijay Baghel, its Durg MP, from Patan which is currently represented by Chhattisgarh Chief Minister and Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel.

In a departure from tradition, the BJP on Thursday released a list of candidates in two poll-bound states months before the announcement of poll dates. The party, in its first list for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, has named candidates in seats where the party has found it tough.

This includes Patan in Chhattisgarh where the BJP has fielded its sitting MP Vijay Baghel against CM Bhupesh Baghel.

In all, the BJP announced 21 candidates for the 90-member Chhattisgarh Assembly and 39 candidates in MP which has 230 seats. Among the 29 candidates in MP are 8 candidates from the SC community, 13 from the ST community and five women.

In Chhattisgarh, the party has fielded 10 people from the ST community, 1 from the SC community and five women.

The list comes a day after a meeting of the Central Election Committee, the party’s highest election authority, which convened late Wednesday evening and was chaired by PM Modi. Leaders attending the meeting said that for Chhattisgarh, the party had decided to categorise the 90 seats into four parts, depending on the winnability. Over a third of the seats in the states are in the last two categories, and the party is looking at an uphill task winning from these.

“The seats announced are mostly from these two categories, so that we have some time in hand to prepare for it,” a general secretary attending Wednesday’s meeting said.

The declaring of candidates early on shows that the party does not want to repeat its mistakes from Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh, where it had not declared its candidates till quite late into the campaigning period. In MP, the party is gearing for an intensive push in reserved seats as well as in seats where the women vote is prominent. The Shivraj Chouhan government, which is facing anti-incumbency after being in power for 18 years, has announced a few schemes in the run up to the

The party president of the MP state unit VD Sharma said that declaring names of the candidates months ahead will have a “positive impact” and will give them ample time to prepare. “We are thankful to the party leadership that the candidates chosen by PM Modi, party president JP Nada and home minister Amit Shah come from a diverse background. There is a retired judge in the list, several social workers, women, and young candidates,” said Sharma.

Among the party’s candidates in MP are Lal Singh Arya, the head of the BJP SC Morcha who has been fielded from Gohad, a reserved seat, Sarla Vijendra Rawat from Sabalgarh, Priyanka Meena from Chachaoura, Nirmala Bhuriya from Petlawad, Bhanu Bhuriya from Jhabua (ST), Alok Sharma from Bhopal Uttar and Dhruv Narayan Singh from Bhopal Madhya, among others.

In Chattisgarh, the party has fielded Laxmi Rajwade from Bhatgaon, Shakuntala Singh Porthe from Pratappur (ST), Sarla Kosaria from Saraipali (SC), Alka Chandrakar from Khallari, Bhulan Singh Maravi from Premnagar, and Maniram Kashyap from Bastar (ST).

In Wednesday’s meeting, the party had also decided to carry out a survey of winnable seats across the five seats, and the survey will be carried out by 350 MLAs of the party from BJP-ruled states like Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Bihar and Maharashtra. The MLAs are meeting in Bhopal on August 18.