- Thursday, February 27, 2025
It is believed that the saffron party made the move to fathom the mood within the party and tackle possible squabble over election tickets, if there is any, well in advance.
By: Shubham Ghosh
IN a first, India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by prime minister Narendra Modi on Thursday (17) announced first lists of candidates for the elections due in the central states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh before the Election Commission of India declared the polling dates.
The party, which is in power in Madhya Pradesh, announced 39 candidates for the state’s 230-member assembly and 21 for the 90-member assembly in neighbouring Chhattisgarh that the opposition Indian National Congress wrested from it in 2018. The BJP was in power in Chhattisgarh for 15 years before the Congress returned to power five years ago.
The BJP’s move comes a day after Modi chaired a meeting of the party’s central election committee, its highest decision-making body for selection of candidates and preparation of election strategies.
According to a report by NDTV, the BJP leadership’s unusual move of announcing the candidates’ names well in advance could be a move to identify divisions within the party’s ranks and resolve them much earlier.
Earlier this year, the BJP had to deal with internal squabble during the election in the southern state of Karnataka which it eventually lost to the Congress.
Besides Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, three other states — Rajasthan, Telangana and the north-eastern state of Mizoram — are going to polls this year ahead of the national election next year and the BJP is leaving no stone unturned to deliver results in these states.
Of these states, the BJP is in power in only Madhya Pradesh while its ally Mizo National Front rules Mizoram. However, their relationship has been strained in the wake of the ongoing disturbance in Manipur, another north-eastern state.
Among the candidates that the BJP announced in Chhattisgarh, the name of Raman Singh, the state’s three-time chief minister, was missing, besides other senior party leaders.
The list for Chhattisgarh comprised five women, 10 candidates from the Scheduled Tribe (ST) and one from the Scheduled Caste (SC) category.
In Madhya Pradesh, too, the name of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and some prominent ministers were not seen in the first list. In this state, too, the party picked five women, eight SC and 13 ST candidates.
