Union ministers Tomar, Patel, several MPs in BJP's 2nd list of candidates for Madhya Pradesh polls

In an attempt to pare down anti-incumbency against its CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan and offer an alternative leadership in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, the BJP on Monday asked top party leaders in the state including three union ministers and several sitting MPs to contest the upcoming assembly polls.

In the second list of 39 candidates released by the party’s Central Election Committee, union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar has been nominated from the Dimani seat, while minister of state for food processing and Jal Shakti Prahlad Singh Patel from Narsingpur. Minister of state for rural development Phaggan Kulaste has been fielded from the Niwas seat. Tomar is also the chairman of the party’s election management committee in the state.

The sitting MPs who have been nominated to contest assembly polls include former state president Rakesh Singh from Jabalpur West, Ganesh Singh from Satna, Riti Pathak from Sidhi, Uday Pratap Singh from Gadarwara, and Scindia aide Imarti Devi from Dabra. The BJP also fielded party veteran and general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya from the Indore-1 seat. In all the party has fielded six women in this list.

Other candidates in the list include Raghuraj Kansana (Morena), Amrish Sharma (Lahar), Mohan Singh Rathore (Bhitarwar), Pradeep Agrawal (Sewda) and Ramesh Khatik (Karera). It has named Hirendra Singh (Raghogarh), Brijbihari Pateria (Deori), Arvind Pateria (Rajnagar), Shrikant Chaturvedi (Maihar), Vishwamitra Pathak (Sihawal), Dilip Jaiswal Kotma and Pankaj Tekam (Dindori), among others.

The party is however, yet to announce the candidature of CM Chouhan. In its second list, the BJP has announced candidates for four Scheduled Caste (SC) and 10 Scheduled Tribe (ST) reserved seats. In all, the party has announced 78 candidates.

In its first list, which was announced mid-August, the party had given tickets to 39 candidates across the state’s 230 seats. In 2018, the BJP had lost in all the constituencies for which the candidates were announced in the first list. Among those that the party had then announced was Lal Singh Arya, the head of the BJP SC Morcha, who was fielded from Gohad.

The party has been declaring its candidates much ahead of the elections so as not to repeat its mistakes from Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh, where it did not declare candidates till days ahead of the nomination. In MP, the party is facing anti-incumbency against the Chouhan government after being in power for 18 years. Sources said that in poll-bound Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, too, the party might field union ministers.

In 2018, the Congress had come to power in Madhya Pradesh with Kamal Nath at the helm, after winning 114 seats while the BJP won 109 seats. In March 2020, the government fell after Jyotiraditya Scindia led 22 MLAs including six ministers into the BJP, bagging himself a Cabinet berth and Chouhan his fourth term.