BJP declares 92 more candidates for Madhya Pradesh elections

BHOPAL: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday released its fifth list of 92 candidates for Madhya Pradesh assembly polls. Prominent names in the latest list include Madhya Pradesh ministers Usha Thakur and Mahendra Singh Sisodiya and Mousam Bisen, who is daughter of minister Gaurishankar Bisen.

Former ministers Jayant Kumar Malaiya, Antar Singh Arya have been given tickets. Siddharth Tiwari and Sachin Birla, who recently joined the BJP, after resigning from Congress, figure in the list. Party leaders Yoshodhara Raje Scindia, Gauri Shankar Bisen and OPS Bhadoria, a Jyotiraditya Scindia loyalist, are not among the party candidates. BJP has now declared candidates for 228 out of 230 seats.

The party is yet to declare candidates for Guna (Scheduled Caste) and Vidisha seats. The BJP earlier announced a total of 136 candidates in its four lists - 39 candidates each in first and second lists, a single name in the third list and 57 candidates in the fourth list. The second list contained names of three Union Ministers and four MPs. Union Ministers Narendra Singh Tomar and Prahlad Singh Patel have been fielded from the Dimani and Narsinghpur constituencies respectively.

Union Minister Faggan Singh Kulaste will contest from the Niwas seat. BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya and BJP MP Rakesh Singh have been fielded from Indore-1 and Jabalpur Paschim constituencies. BJP's fourth list of 57 candidates included names of 23 state cabinet ministers and Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

The prominent names in the list were Narottam Mishra, Pradhuman Singh Tomar, Bhupendra Singh, Govind Singh Rajput, Gopal Bhargava, Rajendra Shukla, Prabhuram Choudhary, Vishwas Sarang, Tulsi Ram Silavat, Mohan Yadav, Hardeep Singh Dang and Omprakash Sakhlecha. Madhya Pradesh will go to the polls on November 17 and the counting of votes will take place on December 3.

In the last 2018 assembly elections, Congress won 114 seats with a vote share of 40.89 per cent while the BJP came second and managed to win 109 seats. Its vote share was 41.02 per cent. The Congress came to power with Kamal Nath taking oath as the chief minister but Jyotiraditya Scindia, along with 22 loyalist MLAs, switched over to BJP in 2020. The BJP later formed the government with Shivraj Singh Chouhan as Chief Minister.