BHOPAL: Congress candidate from Budhni Rajkumar Patel and BJP’s nominee from Vijaypur Ramniwas Rawat will file their nomination papers for the Assembly bypolls on Thursday.
On Friday, the BJP candidate from Budhni and the Congress nominee from Vijaypur will file nominations.
The Congress will hold a roadshow later in the day to showcase the party’s “strength” on Union Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s home turf.
Congress leaders, including state chief Jitu Patwari, Rajya Sabha MP Vivek Tankha, former Union Minister Kantilal Bhuria, former minister Sajjan Singh Verma, Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly Umang Singhar, MLA Ajay Singh and many others, were likely to join the roadshow.
Patel won the Budhni seat in 1993 and 1998 and was a minister in the Digvijaya Singh government.
BJP leader Rajendra Singh was elected MLA from the Budhni seat of Sehore district in 2003, but he resigned in 2005 to pave the way for then Chief Minister Chouhan’s entry into the state Assembly.
Union Minister Chouhan was an MP from the Vidisha Lok Sabha seat at that time.
Posing a challenge to BJP’s candidate Ramakant Bhargava on former CM Chouhan’s home turf in Budhni will be an uphill task for the Congress.
Union Minister Chouhan won six Assembly elections between 2006 and 2023 from Budhni. In the 2023 Assembly elections, he won from Budhni by a margin of more than 1.05 lakh votes against Congress’ Vikram ‘Mastal’ Sharma.
The bypoll was necessitated after Chouhan was elected as Lok Sabha MP from Vidisha and resigned from the state Assembly. Four-time former Madhe Pradesh CM Chouhan is now Union Agriculture Minister, and he will campaign for the BJP candidate in the coming days.
Chief Minister Mohan Yadav, MP BJP chief V. D. Sharma along with several party leaders will join Rawat during his nomination.
Rawat, a six-time former Congress MLA won Vijaypur Assembly seat in November 2023 with a margin of 17, 000 votes. However, he resigned from the Congress and the state Assembly. He was inducted as minister in CM Yadav’s cabinet.
The two seats are scheduled to go to polls on November 13 while the counting will be on November 23.
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