BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and State Congress chief Kamal Nath is confident of winning 22-23 out of the 29 Lok Sabha seats in the state in the coming general elections.
“Start counting the number of seats which the BJP is expected to lose in comparison to 2014 polls, across the country, including UP, Bihar, Maharashtra, West Bengal and other states and you’ll get a fair idea of how many seats the party will lose in the coming general elections. The BJP won’t get more than 160 seats this time in the country, while the Congress will win 22-23 seats in MP alone,” claimed Kamal Nath.
At a press conference in Bhopal on March 7, the MP CM had stated that Congress will win 25 seats in MP.
Just a few days back, MP cabinet minister Sajjan Singh Verma (Nath’s close confidant) had told journalists in Indore that Congress was targeting to win 15 seats in MP.
Importantly, in the 2014 LS polls, the BJP had won 27 out of the 29 seats in MP, while the Congress had won just two seats. The BJP, however, could win only 109 seats and the Congress won 114 seats in last year’s Vidhan Sabha polls in MP.
When queried about when will the Congress declare candidates for remaining seats in MP, the state party chief said in the next three to four days, candidates for most of the remaining seats will be declared?
So far the Congress has declared nine candidates for MP, while the BJP has declared 18 candidates for the state.
The MP CM also said that former union minister and four-time sitting MP from Guna seat Jyotiraditya Scindia will contest from the same seat only. With this, Nath put all speculations to rest about Scindia’s name being under consideration from Gwalior or Indore seats.
Ex-MP minister’s brother joins Congress
A host of political leaders from the Vindhya region joined the Congress in MPCC chief Kamal Nath’s presence in Bhopal on Saturday. Those leaders, included former MP cabinet minister and present BJP MLA from Rewa seat Rajendra Shukla’s elder brother Vinod Shukla. He was earlier in Congress only, but switched over to BJP a few years back.
Other leaders, who joined Congress, included BJP leader from Maihar (Satna) Dheeraj Pandey and dentist-turned-Satna district panchayat vice-chairperson Dr Rashmi Singh Patel. Patel had contested last year’s assembly polls from Nagod seat of Satna district, but finished third with 25,700 votes, playing an important role in BJP’s win against Congress from the assembly seat by just 1000-plus votes.
Major General (Retd) Shyam Srivastava also joined the Congress at the MPCC HQ in Bhopal.