Watch Nidhi Razdan: The battle for Madhya Pradesh elections 2023 is on

Gulf News

In India, the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) did something very unusual last week. In a departure from its previous strategy, the party did not wait for assembly election dates to be announced first before declaring it’s candidates.  So for the all important state of Madhya Pradesh, the party announced as many as 39 candidates in seats where it believes it is vulnerable. The polls are due at the end of the year and the seats the BJP has declared are those that it lost in 2018 and even lost in the previous assembly in 2013.  Read the full story here: https://gulfnews.com/opinion/op-eds/tight-race-ahead-in-india-bjp-and-congress-locked-in-a-battle-for-madhya-pradesh-1.1692958339770  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  #UAEnews #MadhyaPradesh #India

Transcript

00:00Well, even before assembly elections have officially been announced for Madhya Pradesh,

00:07Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Telangana, the BJP's done something unusual. It's gone ahead

00:12and announced candidates in Madhya Pradesh in as many as 39 seats. These are interestingly

00:17seats the party lost back in 2018 and also even back in 2013. They're hoping that by

00:23announcing the names early, the candidates will have a head start and will be able to

00:28campaign more effectively. This tells you how seriously the BJP is taking the Madhya

00:32Pradesh election. This is, after all, a crucial Hindi heartland state and it will be going

00:36to the polls literally months before the Lok Sabha election. But the BJP faces significant

00:41challenges in Madhya Pradesh this time. For one, huge anti-incumbency because the party's

00:46been in power here now for some 20 odd years, barring about a year or so in which Kamal

00:51Nath of the Congress was Chief Minister. So, there is a lot of voter fatigue with Chief

00:55Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan. And Mr. Chauhan knows that the only reason he is Chief Minister

00:59right now is not because the BJP won the last assembly election, actually they lost it,

01:04but because Jyotiraditya Sindhiya rebelled and walked away with 22 MLAs and brought Kamal

01:08Nath's government down. The second problem for the BJP is that this too could end up

01:13being a close contest with the Congress. And that's why they're not taking any chances.

01:18And finally, there's infighting within the BJP state unit between those loyal to Mr.

01:22Sindhiya and his camp and the old guard of the party. In fact, as many as three of Mr.

01:28Sindhiya's senior loyalists have walked away from him and gone back to the Congress in

01:32recent months. So, the Madhya Pradesh battle is an important one where the BJP is pulling

01:37out all the stops. Will it work? We'll have to wait and see.

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