New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday released its first list of candidates for the ensuing Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh Assembly elections. While 39 candidates were named in the first list for MP polls, 21 candidates made it to the first list for the Chhattisgarh elections.
The candidate lists for the two poll-bound states were released a day after the BJP’s Central Election Committee reviewed the party’s poll preparations in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.
In a meeting that was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president JP Nadda, and Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Amit Shah, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and former Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh, those seats where the saffron party has suffered a setback in previous polls came up for discussion.
BJP’s First List Of Candidates For Madhya Pradesh Assembly Elections
भारतीय जनता पार्टी केन्द्रीय चुनाव समिति ने मध्य प्रदेश में होने वाले आगामी विधानसभा चुनाव 2023 के लिए निम्नलिखित नामों पर अपनी स्वीकृति प्रदान की है। pic.twitter.com/OLYREm5CvJ
— BJP MadhyaPradesh (@BJP4MP) August 17, 2023
BJP’s First List Of Candidates For Chhattisgarh Assembly Polls
भाजपा केंद्रीय चुनाव समिति ने छत्तीसगढ़ में होने वाले आगामी विधानसभा चुनाव 2023 के लिए निम्नलिखित नामों पर अपनी स्वीकृति प्रदान की है। pic.twitter.com/onH3ZlZu4m
— BJP Chhattisgarh (@BJP4CGState) August 17, 2023
BJP Steps Up Poll Preparations
The BJP’s decision to hold the CEC meeting so early — which usually takes place only after poll dates are announced — underlines the significance it has attached to the upcoming five-state polls, the last round of assembly contest before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Five states — Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, and Mizoram — are expected to go to the polls in November-December.
The BJP currently is in power in only Madhya Pradesh and is running an intense campaign to oust the Congress government in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, and the K Chandrashekar Rao-led BRS in Telangana.
In the 2018 polls, the BJP lost power in both Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh but succeeded in toppling the Congress government in the latter. It had won only 15 of the 90 seats in the Chhattisgarh assembly against 68 of the Congress while its tally of seats was 109 against 114 of the Congress in the 230-member Madhya Pradesh assembly.
The BJP has been running organisational programmes in both states to strengthen its support, especially among the communities where its vote share had gone down. The party had, though, swept the Lok Sabha polls in both states in 2019 as voters rallied back around its prime ministerial candidate Modi.