To fight the upcoming general elections, both Congress and BJP seem to have largely opted for change in candidates when it comes to 47 seats declared as 'close contests' in last polls by Election Commission. A swing in such seats can have a bearing on the outcome of the nation's biggest political battle where the Narendra Modi-led BJP is challenging incumbent Congress-led UPA for power.
In about three-fourth or 34 close contest seats fought by both BJP and Congress, where victory margin was less than 3 per cent in 2009 Lok Sabha elections, at least one of them have changed their candidates for elections beginning April 7. In some seats, both parties have changed candidates.
In the balance 13 seats i.e. nearly one-fourth of the close contests fought by both BJP and Congress, both ruling and opposition parties have retained their candidates for constituencies including Ranchi, Gulbarga, Indore, Gurdaspur and Sundargarh, as per nominations announced so far. At these 47 seats, Congress had emerged victorious in 28 and the remaining 19 went to the BJP in 2009 elections.
In Ranchi, sitting MP and former Union minister Subodh Kant Sahay of Congress will again face Ramtahal Chaudhary of BJP. Similarly, Gulbarga will again see its current MP and Railways Minister Mallikarjun Kharge wrestle it out with BJP's Revu Naik Belamgi. Indore in Madhya Pradesh would also again witness a fight between BJP's sitting MP Sumitra Mahajan and Congress's Satyanarayan Patel. Mahajan has been getting re-elected from this constituency since 1989.
Sundargarh in Odisha will see former Union Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram fight it out with Congress's Hemanand Biswal. Oram lost to Biswal in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. In Gurdaspur, Bollywood star Vinod Khanna will again take on the sitting MP and Punjab Congress chief Pratap Singh Bajwa. Among the 'close-contest' seats of 2009 where candidates have changed, both BJP and Congress have opted for new leaders on 15 seats. Besides, BJP has changed candidates on 11 other seats where Congress has retained its leaders.
On seven other seats, Congress has alone gone for a new face. In the Almora seat, BJP has retained its candidate while Congress is yet to announce its nominee so far. According to Election Commission data, a total of 114 seats witnessed such nail-biting fight in the last elections. Uttar Pradesh topped the list with 19 such constituencies followed by Andhra Pradesh at 11 and Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka at nine each.
Rest was with other states. The fiercest contest was witnessed in Tonk-Sawai Madhopur (Rajasthan) and Hoshiarpur (Punjab) where Congress candidates beat their respective BJP counterparts by very narrow margins of 0.04 per cent each. In Chandauli (Uttar Pradesh), Samajwadi Party defeated Bahujan Samaj Party by a 0.07 per cent margin. In Kozhikode, Congress took the lead over CPI(M) by a thin margin of 0.11 per cent.
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