Although the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) secured a landslide victory in Madhya Pradesh in the assembly elections held on Sunday (December 3), close to 12 ministers of the saffron party including home minister Narottam Mishra lost their seats. Mishra lost from Datia seat by a margin of 7,742 votes to Congress candidate Rajendra Bharti.
Other ministers including Arvind Bhadoria from Ater, Kamal Patel from Harda and Gaurishankar Bisen from Balaghat faced defeat. Prem Singh Patel from Badwani, Mahendra Singh Sisodiya from Bamori, Rajvardhan Singh Dattigaon from Badnawar, Bharat Singh Kushwaha from Gwalior rural, Ramkhelawan Patel from Amarpatan and Suresh Dhakad from Pohri could not make to the list of winning candidates. Sisodiya and Dattigaon are close associates of Union civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia.
Dattigaon was defeated by Bhanwar Singh Shekhawat, who Shekhawat switched over to the Congress from BJP just ahead of the elections. Besides, Rahul Singh Lodhi, nephew of former chief minister Uma Bharti, was trounced from Khargapur. Another minister Ram Kishor Kawre too faced defeat from Paraswada. BJP candidate Imarti Devi, also a Scindia loyalist candidate, lost from Dabra by 2,267 votes to Congress' Suresh Raje.
Sitting BJP MP from Satna, Ganesh Singh, lost by 4,041 votes to Congress' Dabbu Siddharth Sukhlal Kushwaha. Among the prominent candidates who are trailing is sitting MLA from Chanchoura, Laxman Singh who is the younger brother of senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh. He is trailing by over 60,000 votes after 19 of 21 rounds of counting.
Of the 230 seats in MP, the BJP had won 160 and was leading in 3 as per the latest data shared by the Election Commission. The Congress won 64 seats and was ahead in two, it said. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Union ministers Narendra Singh Tomar, Prahlad Patel, BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayavargiya, Congress's Kamal Nath and former minister Ram Niwas Rawat are among the prominent faces that have emerged victorious in the state polls.
Chouhan retained his Budhni seat by a margin of 1,04,974 votes by defeating TV actor-turned-Congress leader Vikram Mastal Sharma, a poll official said. Chouhan won for the sixth time from the Budhni seat. He had won his maiden election from Budhni way back in 1990 and was elected as a Member of Parliament for the first time from the Vidisha constituency the following year.
The longest-serving chief minister of a BJP-ruled state and popularly known as 'mama' (maternal uncle) and 'paon-paon wale bhaiya' (foot soldier), Chouhan was not projected this time as the party's CM face. However, he turned the tables in favour of the ruling party by launching game-changer schemes like Ladli Behna' to beat prevailing anti-incumbency.
Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar, a potential contender for the CM's post, won from Dimani assembly seat in Morena district by defeating BSP's Balveer Singh Dandotiya by 24,461 votes. Another prominent winner and contender for the top position is Union minister Prahlad Patel, who won from the Narsinghpur assembly seat by a margin of 31,310 votes by defeating Lakhan Singh Patel of Congress.
BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, another potential chief ministerial candidate, was fielded from the Indore-1 seat, which was considered a difficult one for him. But knowing his track record of winning polls from different seats in the Indore district, Vijayvargiya bagged the Indore-1 seat by 57,939 votes defeating Congress' candidate and sitting MLA Sanjay Shukla. Though state Congress president Kamal Nath won from his home turf Chhindwara by defeating BJP's Vivek Bunty Sahu by 36,594 votes, the loss of the party and its poor performance has taken away all the sheen from his victory.
(With inputs from PTI)
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