BHOPAL: The outcome of the twin assembly by-polls in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh turned out to be a mixed bag for the ruling BJP and the prime opposition Congress. While the ruling BJP retained the Budhni seat of central MP, the Congress held on to its Vijaypur seat in Gwalior-Chambal, despite its previous nominee being the BJP candidate this time.
But the Vijaypur seat of the Gwalior-Chambal region which was being seen as a battle of turncoats in the first home of African cheetahs (the constituency also houses the Kuno National Park) saw a big political upset, as the state’s forest minister and first-time BJP candidate Ramniwas Rawat was defeated by Congress’s first-time tribal candidate Mukesh Malhotra by 7315 votes.
Rawat, the veteran OBC politician from the Gwalior-Chambal region (he has sought recounting of votes) who had won the seat six times in the past for the Congress, had switched over to the BJP during the Lok Sabha polls, while ex-BJP man Malhotra had joined the Congress during the same national elections.
The by-poll was necessitated by Rawat’s resignation as Congress MLA from the seat in July. After the defeat he’ll now have to quit as minister.
Interestingly, it was Malhotra (he finished third with more than 44,000 votes while contesting as an independent candidate, after being denied a ticket by BJP), who had largely contributed to Rawat’s 18,000-plus votes win from the seat in the 2023 elections.
The absence of a BSP candidate (the elephant symbol party’s nominee had secured over 34,000 votes in the 2023 polls) too seems to have helped Malhotra’s cause by possibly consolidating the tribal, scheduled caste Jatav community votes and Muslim community votes, which collectively accounted for 38% of the total votes in the constituency.
Importantly, the November 13 by-poll in Vijaypur, which saw 77 per cent polling, was marred by incidents of violence, particularly in the tribal, Jatav and Muslim-dominated villages of Sheopur district. The Congress’s state leadership, while accusing the BJP workers of stopping the tribal Dalits and Muslims from voting, had demanded a re-poll in 37 polling booths, but added that it would still win the by-poll in Vijaypur.
BJP retains Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s pocket-borough, but a comparatively low margin
Budhni seat of Sehore district (the home seat and bastion of ex-MP CM and present union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan) saw Chouhan’s loyalist BJP nominee Ramakant Bhargava defeat the 1993 Congress winner Rajkumar Patel (considered ex-CM Digvijaya Singh’s loyalist) by 13,901 votes.
But the victory margin for Bhargava was more than nine times lower than Chouhan's 2023 assembly polls margin of 1.04 lakh-plus votes from the seat.
The comparatively lower winning margin for Bhargava, particularly assumed significance, as Chouhan, had himself aggressively campaigned for his loyalist in Budhni many days.