Bhopal
The BJP may have suffered major setbacks in States like Uttar Pradesh but Madhya Pradesh helped it big time in giving it the crucial lead over the I.N.D.I.A bloc.
While reports poured in about the reverses in UP, here in MP the BJP’s upward swing had no match as it won all the 29 Lok Sabha seats from the State. These included the 6 ST reserved seats of Shahdol, Mandla, Betul, Dhar, Ratlam and Khargone. Tribals voted enmasse in favour of the BJP candidates helping them trounce their nearest Congress rivals by huge margins.
For the general elections 2024, the BJP had pitted Union Minister Faggan Singh Kulaste (Mandla), outgoing MPs Himadri Singh (Shadol), Durga Das Uikey (Betul), Gajendra Patel (Khargone), Savitri Thakur (Dhar) and Anita Singh Chauhan (Ratlam) against Congress’ former State Minister Omkar Singh Markam, Phundelal Marko, Ramu Tekam, Porlal Kharte, Radheshyam Muvel and former Union Minister Kantilal Bhuria.
Union Minister Kulaste defeated Congress’s Omkar Singh Markam by a margin of 1,03,846 votes from the Mandla seat. Kulaste polled 7,51,375 votes, while Markam bagged 6,47,529 votes.
In Ratlam, BJP’s Anita Nagar Singh Chauhan defeated Congress leader and former Union Minister Kantilal Bhuria by 2,07,232 votes, becoming the first woman to win this seat. Anita, wife of Madhya Pradesh forest minister Nagar Singh Chauhan, received 7,95,863 votes while Bhuria, who had won from Ratlam five times in the past, got 5,88,631 votes.
In Shahdol, BJP’s Himadri Singh bagged 7,11,143 votes whereas Congress’ Phunde Lal Singh Marko got 3,13,803 votes. Singh beat Marko by a huge margin of 3,97,340 votes.
In Dhar parliamentary constituency, BJP candidate Savitri Thakur bagged 7,94,449 votes against her Congress rival Radheshyam Muvel, who got 5,75,784 votes. Thakur defeated Muvel by a margin of 2,18,665 votes.
In Khargone LS seat, Gajendra Singh Patel of BJP won over Congress candidate Porlal Kharte by a margin of 1,35,018 votes. Patel bagged 8,19,863 votes while Kharte got 6,84,845 votes. Similarly, Betul saw BJP’s Durga Das Uikey securing 8,48,236 votes compared to 4,68,475 votes of Congress candidate Ramu Tekam. The victory margin of Uikey was a whopping 3,79.761 votes.
In 2019, the BJP had won 28 of the 29 constituencies including these six tribal Lok Sabha seats while the Congress could win the lone seat of Chhindwara, the home turf of its seniormost leader and former Chief Minister Kamal Nath. This time round, the BJP even wrested that making a clean sweep.
Madhya Pradesh, the Hindi heartland state, has the highest number of 6 Lok Sabha seats reserved for tribals and it has been a BJP stronghold for the last two decades. It won 27 of LS seats in 2019, 25 seats in 2014, 16 seats in 2009 and 25 seats in the 2004 general elections.
Madhya Pradesh had been at the centrestage of Modi and the erstwhile Shivraj Singh Chouhan governments’ pro-tribal initiatives.
Around 6 months ago in the Assembly elections in December 2023, the BJP had won an impressive majority bagging 163 seats in the 230-member House while the grand old party registered victory in 66 seats and the Bharatiya Adivasi Party won one seat.
