This situation arose after seat-sharing talks of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc partners collapsed in the state.
NEW DELHI
With seat-sharing talks of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc partners collapsing in Madhya Pradesh, the Congress finds itself in the strange situation of having to face its I.N.D.I.A. bloc partners Janta Dal United (JDU), Samajwadi Party (SP), and Aam Adami Party (AAP), on 92 seats out of 230 in the election-bound state.
All the parties of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc have different thoughts about whether they should extend their alliance to the state elections or limit them only to the upcoming general election. However, the Congress insists that seat-sharing is meant to be for the parliamentary elections, while others think that the larger idea should be to work together to defeat the BJP, be it in state or national polls.
The Aam Adami party led by Arvind Kejriwal has released a list of 70 candidates, the highest number in the Congress-led I.N.D.I.A bloc, followed by the Samajwadi Party (SP), which has given tickets to 43 candidates, and Janata Dal United, which has fielded 10 candidates, the least in the alliance.
A source in the Congress said that “after the failure of seat-sharing between the parties of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, 26 of the 92 seats are those in which the Congress would face off electorally against two of its party alliances in the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, the SP and the AAP. The party will also compete against the JDU and AAP candidates in three more.”
In the 2018 Assembly election, Congress won 9 seats with a minimum margin of 5,000 votes. This includes Damoh (798 votes), Jabalpur North (578), Petlawad (5,000 votes), Gunnour (1,984 votes), Chhattarpur (3,495 votes), Rajnagar (732 votes), Gwalior South (121 votes), Prishvipur (4,620 votes), and Picchore (2,675 votes), where the Congress had contested against the SP, AAP, and JDU. On the other hand, the Congress had lost 6 seats with a narrow margin of 4,000 votes, where SP, AAP, and JDU were in the race. This includes Chandla (1,177 votes), Maihar (2,984 votes), Jabera (3,485 votes), Singrauli (3,726 votes), Nagod (1,234 votes), and Indore-5 (1,133 votes). In the last Assembly elections, the SP fielded candidates in 52 seats, winning 1 out of them. The AAP had failed to open its account but secured a vote share of 0.66 per cent, while JDU had not entered the polling fray in 2018.
Similar to the previous election, a close contest is predicted for these seats where the I.N.D.I.A. bloc’s partners have fielded their candidates. This might upset the calculations made by the Congress. This time, it has become more significant because pre-election polls indicated that the Bhartiya Janata Party and Congress Party would compete head-to-head in the state. According to an opinion survey, the Congress is expected to win 110 seats, while the BJP is expected to win 115 seats.
In the 2018 Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections, with 114 seats, the Congress was declared the single-largest party; 109 seats went to the BJP. Following the widespread resignation of the state’s ruling MLAs, the BJP later established a government in the state.