The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday named its candidates for 39 seats in Madhya Pradesh and 21 in Chhattisgarh, none of which is currently held by the party, for the upcoming assembly polls which are still months from being officially announced by the Election Commission.
The BJP's decision to name its candidates in these relatively weak seats so much in advance underscores its intent to get the better of the Congress in the two states, more so following the opposition party's big win in Karnataka a few months back.
The lists name five women each in the two states and contain a large number of SC, ST reserved constituencies where the BJP had suffered serious reverses in the 2018 polls.
The party has fielded Vijay Baghel, its Durg MP, from Patan which is currently represented by Chhattisgarh Chief Minister and Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel.
The BJP has named its national SC Morcha chief Lal Singh Arya its candidate from Gohad in Madhya Pradesh.
The candidates were decided at the BJP's Central Election Committee meeting on Wednesday which was chaired by party chief J P Nadda and attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Amit Shah among other senior leaders.
In Chhattisgarh, the BJP has fielded Bhulan Singh Maravi from Premnagar, Laxmi Rajwade from Bhatgaon, Shakuntala Singh Porthe from Pratappur (ST), Sarla Kosaria from Saraipali (SC), Alka Chandrakar from Khallari, Gita Ghasi Sahu from Khujji and Maniram Kashyap from Bastar (ST), among others.
In Madhya Pradesh, it has named Sarla Vijendra Rawat from Sabalgarh, Priyanka Meena from Chachaoura, Lalita Yadav from Chhatarpur, Anchal Sonkar from Jabalpur Purba (SC), Nirmala Bhuriya from Petlawad, Bhanu Bhuriya from Jhabua (ST), Alok Sharma from Bhopal Uttar and Dhruv Narayan Singh from Bhopal Madhya, among others.
The party's decision to announce the first list of candidates so early underlines the significance it has attached to five state elections, the last round of assembly contest before the all-important Lok Sabha polls. Besides Chhattisgarh and MP, Rajasthan, Telangana and Mizoram are scheduled to go to polls later this year.
The BJP is in power only in Madhya Pradesh and is running an intense campaign to oust the Congress government in Chhattisgarh.
The BJP in 2018 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.
Though the Congress came to power in Madhya Pradesh following the polls, the BJP toppled it following defection by many MLAs of the party.
