Bhopal: BJP organisational secretary and RSS nominee VD Sharma’s candidature was finally announced from Madhya Pradesh’s Khajurago seat in Bundelkhand, as the party named three more candidates from the state on Sunday.
Indore and Bhopal remain among five prestigious seats in MP where the names of candidates are yet to be announced.
Sharma, former national general secretary of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), was first considered a nominee for Morena, then for Bhopal and later for Vidisha constituency. He would be facing Congress leader Kavita Singh, who is associated with the royal family of the region. Sitting Khajuraho MP, Nagendra Singh, is now an MLA.
The BJP has denied tickets to local candidates in Khajuraho, Damoh and Tikamgarh and is also facing internal rebellion.
By fielding Sharma, a Brahmin from Khajuraho, the BJP has denied ticket to a Thakur candidate from Bundelkhand.
The party has also named Jhabua MLA GS Damor from Ratlam-Jhabua seat against Congress veteran Kantilal Bhuria. Bhuria’s son Vikrant was defeated by Damor from the Jhabua assembly seat.
Essentially a Congress citadel, the BJP had crept in through Dileep Singh Bhuria amid strong Modi wave in 2014, but Kantilal Bhuria wrested the seat in 2015 by-poll after the demise of the former.
The BJP has also named Chhatar Singh Darbar from Dhar seat. Darbar, a two-time former MP, was replaced with sitting MP Savitri Singh Thakur whose performance as an MP was under the dock.
The party has held back five seats, including Bhopal and Indore. Senior leader Digvijaya Singh is the Congress nominee from Bhopal, while there is uncertainty over the candidature of Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan from Indore.
The names of Union minister Uma Bharti and Pragya Singh Thakur, who is facing trial in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, are doing the rounds as the BJP's pick to take on Congress leader Digvijaya Singh in Bhopal.
Bhopal is a BJP stronghold since 1989 but Singh's candidature, and the fact that the Congress won three out of the eight Assembly seats that comprise the Lok Sabha constituency in the 2018 state polls, has forced the saffron party to do a rethink.
With former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan having time and again expressed his unwillingness to contest Lok Sabha elections, the RSS seems to be persuading Uma Bharti to take on Singh in a bid to polarise the electoral atmosphere in the state capital.
Mahajan also reached New Delhi on Sunday to meet the top party leaders and brief them about her choices as nominees.
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