Bhopal: More than 76 per cent polling was reported in the two assembly by-elections in Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday. While union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s bastion Budhni reported 75.05 per cent voting, the Vijaypur seat reported a slightly higher 77.42 per cent voter turnout till the filing of this news report.
While the by-poll to Budhni seat of central MP was necessitated by the resignation of ex-MP CM and current Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan following his election to Lok Sabha earlier this year, Vijaypur seat of Gwalior-Chambal went to by-poll due to resignation by its six-times sitting Congress MLA Ramniwas Rawat, who as the state forest minister in present MP government is in the fray now as BJP candidate.
Polling in Vijaypur, however, was marred by group clashes, protests by villagers and allegations of bogus voting and booth capturing.
The Sheopur district election officer Kishor Kanyal, while refuting reports of booth capturing and bogus voting, admitted that a clash between two groups resulted in injury to at least four persons in one place. He also added that some minor incidents were reported from other places in the constituency, but the polling process remained unaffected.
“Till now no case has been registered against anyone anywhere. As a precautionary measure, both the prime candidates, the BJP’s Ramniwas Rawat and Congress’s Mukesh Malhotra, were confined to separate guest houses in two different parts of the constituency,” Kanyal said.
Also, both the state presidents of BJP and Congress, VD Sharma and Jitu Patwari respectively, were prevented by administration and police from entering the limits of Vijaypur assembly constituency of Sheopur district earlier in the day.
The opposition Congress party’s delegation led by its state media wing head Mukesh Nayak, submitted a detailed six-point complaint earlier in the day at the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO-MP) office in Bhopal.
Talking to journalists after submitting the complaint, Nayak said, “What happened in Vijaypur during the by-poll is unprecedented, never has anything like this happened in the history of electoral politics of the country. Police along with BJP’s goons stopped the tribal and minority community voters from exercising their franchise. Our candidate in Vijaypur was kept in police custody and many of our party workers were unnecessarily targeted and detained by police in Vijaypur.”
“Even in Budhni constituency, an Angawadi worker seated inside one of the booths, was campaigning for the BJP. The female voters were being told by that particular Anganwadi worker that failure to vote for the BJP will see them lose their benefits under the Ladli Behna Scheme from next month,” Nayak alleged.
Meanwhile, according to local media reports, voters of the Telipura polling booth protested outside the Virpur police station of the Vijaypur assembly constituency and later blocked the Sheopur-Morena road. The protesting tribal voters accused the OBC Rawat community (the community to which the forest minister and BJP candidate belong to) of stopping the tribal voters from exercising their franchise.
In Andhipura village, villagers alleged that ruling BJP workers didn’t allow them to vote, while similar allegations were made by voters of two other tribal-dominated villages, including Khadi.