BHOPAL: With an eye on the coming Lok Sabha elections, the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress, held crucial brainstorming meets at their Madhya Pradesh headquarters in Bhopal on Saturday.
The BJP’s meeting while focusing on increasing overall vote share to 68-70% and by 10% on each polling booth to win all 29 seats, changed the jurisdictional regions of the recently appointed seven Lok Sabha cluster in-charges.
On the other hand, around two km away at the state Congress HQ, the three-members strong screening committee for LS polls after meeting with state leadership, agreed in principle for a 50-50 mix of experienced and young leaders as candidates for the 29 LS seats of the state.
The BJP’s top organisational leadership from Delhi, including national general secretary (organization) BL Santosh, national joint general secretary (organization) Shiv Prakash joined two newly appointed LS polls in-charges for MP – Dr Mahendra Singh and co in-charge Satish Upadhyaya – in holding a meeting of recently appointed seven Lok Sabha cluster in-charges and other senior leaders of the state, including CM Dr Mohan Yadav, state party chief VD Sharma and former CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
According to sources privy to the meetings aiming to ensure that none of the seven Lok Sabha cluster in-charges (each cluster barring Bhopal region has four LS seats each) are tasked with coordinating the LS polls on their home turf, the jurisdictional regions were changed.
Changing the jurisdictional boundaries of the seven Lok Sabha cluster in-charges, it was decided that the two deputy CMs Rajendra Shukla (who was earlier tasked with four seats of his home turf Vindhya region) and Jagdish Dewda (who was earlier tasked with four seats of his home Ujjain region) will now be in-charges of LS seats of Bhopal and Indore region respectively.
Among the five other LS cluster in-charges, senior MP cabinet minister Prahlad Patel will now take care of seats of Rewa-Vindhya region instead of his home turf Jabalpur-Mahakoshal region, his senior cabinet colleague Kailash Vijayvargiya will be tasked with seats of Jabalpur-Mahakoshal region, another MP minister Vishvas Sarang was entrusted seats of Ujjain region, cabinet minister Bhupendra Singh with Gwalior region and ex-minister Narottam Mishra with Sagar-Bundelkhand region.
“The meeting reiterated our resolve of winning all 29 seats (party won 28 seats in 2019 polls). The meeting was meant to blow the organisational poll bugle for the LS polls with the aim of increasing party’s vote share on each booth by 10% and total vote share on all 29 seats to 68-70%,” state BJP chief VD Sharma said.
At the state Congress HQ, the three member AICC screening committee headed by Rajya Sabha member Rajni Patil and including former India hockey captain-turned-Punjab MLA Pargat Singh for each of the 29 LS seats.
Sources claimed that party candidates on the 29 seats will be decided by month-end.