Congress first list in Madhya Pradesh: TV actor who played Hanuman to take on Shivraj, 69 MLAs renominated

With the list, which was released keeping in the religious significance of the first day of Sharad Navaratri, the party sprung a surprise by picking television actor Vikram Mastal to take on Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Budhni. Mastal, who played the role of Hanuman in the 2008 reboot of Ramayan has been fielded considering the party’s shift to soft Hindutva politics and with Kamal Nath himself steering the party through this path by portraying himself as a staunch Hanuman devotee. In the last election, former Union Minister Arun Yadav lost to Chouhan, following which he was subsequently sidelined in the party over a feud with Nath.

Of the candidates, 39 belong to the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category, 22 are from the Scheduled Castes (SC), 30 are from the Scheduled Tribes (STs), and six are from religious minority communities. The party has given tickets to 19 women and the line-up is full of rather young candidates as 65 of them are under the age of 50.

Congress spokesperson Piyush Babele said, “If we compare Congress’s first list with that of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP announced 39 names in their first list and they also announced tickets for contested seats. The BJP’s first list made it clear that despite being in power for 18 years, it is in a defensive position to fight the elections.”

Babele said while the BJP chose to announce Chouhan’s name in the fourth list, the Congress issued tickets to its winning MLAs in the first list, signalling the confidence it has in the legislators and “making it clear that the party is aggressively entering the election arena”. The Congress has said the announcement of the list got delayed because it took time to consult a wide range of party leaders “unlike the BJP in which the Central government runs the show”.

A Congress leader said, “The list of candidates is based on extensive surveys and was finalised only after consulting every tier of the party leadership. This is the best possible list of candidates we arrived at to counter the BJP.”