BHOPAL: Tasked by the party to wrest the Indore-1 assembly seat from the Congress and rub off his poll management experience and political influence on other seats too, the BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, a native of Indore district, said he didn’t desire even one per cent to contest polls himself.
“I had not even one per cent desire to contest polls myself. I did not have the mindset of contesting the polls as a candidate. I still can’t believe that I am a candidate. I was preparing to campaign for other candidates. I’m a big leader now and ready for the contest,” Vijayvargiya said kick-starting campaigning from the Indore-1 seat on Tuesday evening.
“I will work for making Indore-1 seat the best in all respects and win it with record votes. During the campaigning, I will try to reach every voter,” the seasoned politician told the party workers before riding pillion on a motorbike as part of a procession in the constituency.
Vijayvargiya, who has never lost any election, has won six successive assembly polls from three different seats of the Indore district – Indore-4 (1990), Indore-2 (1993, 1998, and 2003) and Mhow (2008, and 2013). He was Indore’s first elected mayor in 2000.
The 67-year-old BJP politician, who was the organisation’s brain behind BJP’s 2014 assembly poll success in Haryana, but was lying in the cold since the 2021 West Bengal assembly poll debacle, is believed to have been lobbying for the party ticket for his first-time MLA son Akash Vijayvargiya this time from Indore-2 seat (his home seat).
The BJP has been winning the home seat for the last 30 years, but the party stunned him, by naming him as the candidate.
Vijayvargiya is pitted against first-time Congress MLA Sanjay Shukla. Importantly, Shukla himself comes from a family that has BJP roots and the overwhelming support of Brahmin voters, who form a sizable chunk of the electorate in the Indore seat.