As many as 14 sitting Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs have been denied nomination in the second list of 64 candidates for the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections.
The list, which the party’s Central Election Committee released in Delhi on Wednesday, has nine woman candidates, 12 STs and 24 SCs. The party has, however, given tickets to 16 sitting MLAs, five ministers, 12 ex-MLAs and one ex-MP -- Hemant Khandelwal from Betul.
All the 14 MLAs, who were denied tickets, were facing anti-incumbency in their respective constituencies and told by the party leadership in advance that they would not be renominated.
They have been asked to work for the party and assured that they would be accommodated in other positions, if the party comes to power.
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who had the maximum say in the ticket allotment, had conducted a pre-poll survey to gauge the opinion about the sitting MLAs in their constituencies.
Party sources said all MLAs, whose report card was not found satisfactory, have been omitted from the list. In the first list, names of 147 candidates were declared in which two ministers and 16 sitting MLAs were denied tickets.
Prominent among who have been given tickets are Ashok Rohani, son of Ishwar Das Rohani who passed away on Tuesday due to heart attack, and Jalam Singh, brother of former union minister Prahlad Singh Patel, who would contest from Narsinghpur despite facing huge protest from the local party workers.
Even though the BJP has not nominated Chowdhary Rakesh Singh, former deputy leader of the Congress legislature party, who had defected to the Bharatiya Janata Party during the last confidence motion, his brother Mukesh Chowdhary has been given the ticket.
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