BHOPAL : After a lower polling compared to the 2019 polls in the first two phases, the ongoing Lok Sabha elections move into the third phase into Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior-Chambal region –infamous for lower voter turnout, extremely high summer temperatures and politics divided sharply on caste lines.
Four of the nine seats which will vote on May 7 are Gwalior-Chambal region’s seats, including Guna, Bhind-SC, Morena and Gwalior, which saw a close contest between BJP and Congress in the 2023 assembly polls. Four seats, Vidisha, Rajgarh, state capital Bhopal and Betul-ST form part of the central MP, which emerged as the best region for the BJP in state polls, while one seat Sagar forms part of the Bundelkhand region. All nine seats were won by BJP.
The May 7 contest will see three political bigwigs, including two former CMs Digvijaya Singh and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, returning to their home parliamentary seats after 33 and 20 years respectively, while union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia who won the Guna seat four times between 2002 and 2014, before losing it in 2019 to a BJP first-timer, is contesting to wrest his seat.
In Rajgarh, 1984 and 1991 winner and 1989 loser Digvijaya Singh is faced with the uphill task of retaining the central MP seat against second-time sitting MP Rodmal Nagar, who won the seat defeating Singh’s loyalist Mona Sustani (now in BJP) by 4.31 lakh votes in 2019. Singh is particularly banking on his old links across the constituency spread in three districts as well as the high anti-incumbency against the sitting BJP MP.
In the adjoining Vidisha constituency (a saffron citadel), five-times winner Shivraj Singh Chouhan (he won in 1991, 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004) is not just eyeing the sixth win from the seat spread in four districts (including Chouhan’s home district Sehore), but is actually targeting highest winning margin in the country against Congress septuagenarian Pratap Bhanu Sharma.
In Rajgarh and Vidisha’s neighbourhood, union minister and four-times former Congress MP Jyotiraditya Scindia is making all possible efforts across the eight assembly segments-strong Guna constituency to regain his lost glory from the seat, where he suffered shock defeat against own protégé and first-time BJP candidate Dr KP Yadav by 1.25 lakh votes in 2019. Contesting for the first time as BJP nominee, Scindia faces a Yadav caste candidate Rao Yadvendra Singh Yadav, who hails from an old BJP family.
The three other seats of Gwalior-Chambal region are turning out to be a real challenge for the ruling BJP, whose candidates, including first-time sitting MP Sandhya Rai (Bhind-SC) and ex-MLAs Bharat Singh Kushwah (Gwalior), Shiv Mangal Tomar (Morena) are not just faced with anti-incumbency, but also apprehensive of their own cadres.
The Congress candidates from these three seats, including sitting MLA Phool Singh Baraiya (Bhind-SC) and ex-MLAs Nitu Sikarwar (Morena) and Pravin Pathak (Gwalior) are hoping to succeed based on the right caste balance and differences within the BJP.
In Bhind, the BSP candidate and 2019 Congress loser Devashish Jariaria and in Morena the BSP candidate Ramesh Garg may damage the poll prospects of Congress and BJP candidates respectively.
In the state capital Bhopal, however, the BJP seems to have an edge, owing to the recent assembly polls performance (it won 6 out of the 8 assembly segments), as its candidate former Bhopal mayor Alok Sharma takes on Congress’ Bhopal rural district president Arun Srivastava, who is banking on his clout among the 2 lakh plus Kayastha voters. But Srivastava has a mountain to climb in the constituency, which has been a BJP bastion since 1989.
The Betul-ST seat is set to witness a rerun of the 2019 polls, as the first-time BJP MP DD Uike takes on Congress’s Ramu Tekam. Uike who defeated Tekam by 3.60 lakh votes in 2019, still seems to be in a strong position owing to better grassroots connection with voters in the constituency spread in three districts.
Sagar seat of Bundelkhand region which is spread in two districts, Sagar and Vidisha and is being won by the BJP since 1996 has new BJP face Lata Wankhede taking on Congress’s high-flying and wealthy candidate Guddu Raja Bundela, who hails from a politically powerful Bundela Kshatriya family of adjoining UP.
While Vidhan Sabha speaker Narendra Singh Tomar’s loyalists Bharat Singh Kushwah and Shiv Mangal Tomar are in the fray from Gwalior and Morena seats respectively despite losing previous assembly polls, three Shivraj Singh Chouhan loyalists, among them Alok Sharma, Late Wankhede and Rodmal Nagar are in fray from Bhopal, Sagar and Rajgarh seats respectively.
A breakup of 2023 assembly poll results reveals that out of the 72 assembly segments forming the nine LS constituencies going to polls on May 7, the BJP won 50, while the Congress emerged winner in only 22 assembly segments.
In the four seats in the Gwalior-Chambal region, the contest was closer, as the BJP won 18 seats and the Congress 14.