Poll countdown begins: The 5 Congress big guns central to party’s Madhya Pradesh prospects

Considered to be close to former chief ministers Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh, Singh is known for being a fierce critic of Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and has a crucial role in the Congress’s plans to bring down Scindia.

The LoP started his political career as a student leader and joined the Janata Dal in 1990. He switched to the Congress in 1993 and has been with it ever since. He has held various ministerial portfolios in the state in different Congress governments, such as cooperatives, parliamentary affairs, general administration, revenue, and panchayati raj.

Kantilal Bhuria (73), campaign committee head

Bhuria heads the Congress’s election campaign committee and is the state unit’s seniormost Adivasi leader. He served as the Union Minister of Tribal Affairs in the UPA government from May 2009 to July 2011.

A former state Congress president, Bhuria is from the Bhil tribe in the Malwa region, which has 66 of the state’s 230 Assembly seats. Tribals constitute around 21% of the state’s population and there are 47 Assembly constituencies reserved for Scheduled Tribes (STs). In 2018, the BJP won only 16 of those while the Congress won 30, a reversal of the outcome in 2013 when the BJP bagged 31 and the Congress won 15.

Bhuria started his political career as a student leader and joined the Congress in 1980. He was elected to the Lok Sabha four times — thrice from Jhabua and once from Ratlam, which is an ST-reserved seat. Apart from the tribal affairs ministry, he was the Minister of State (MoS) for consumer affairs, food and public distribution, and agriculture in the UPA-I government. After losing the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Ratlam, Bhuria won the Jhabua Assembly bypoll.

Arun Subhashchandra Yadav (49), former state party president

Arun Yadav is the son of former Deputy CM Subhash Yadav and served as the Khargone MP in 2007 after winning a by-election. Yadav entered Parliament from Khandwa in 2009 and served as a Union MoS in the UPA government. He was appointed the president of the state Congress in 2014 but resigned after the party’s defeat in the 2018 Assembly elections.

Sidelined after his loss to CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan and a feud with current state Congress president Kamal Nath, Yadav has a lot riding in this election since Congress Working Committee (CWC) member Kamleshwar Patel is being billed as the party’s next big Other Backward Classes (OBC) face.

Accounting for 14% of the population, the Yadav community is one of the most politically influential groups in the state. The Congress leader has been touring Bundelkhand, which has a substantial Yadav population, weaning away Scindia loyalists from the community.

Ajay Singh (68), the Vindhya lynchpin

Also known as “Rahul Bhaiya”, Singh is the son of former CM and Union Minister Arjun Singh. He belongs to the Thakur community and has a strong base in the Vindhya region, especially in the district of Sidhi where his family has been influential for decades.

Singh started his political career in 1985 when he won the Assembly bypoll from Churhat in Sidhi that had been vacated by his father. He retained the constituency in 1991 but lost it to the BJP’s Govind Prasad two years later. He regained it in 1998 and served as a minister in the Digvijaya Singh Cabinet. He won the seat in 2003, 2008, and 2013 but lost it to the BJP’s Sharadendu Tiwari in the last state election.

Singh is expected to play a role in eroding the BJP’s support in Vindhya, where the BJP won 24 of the 30 Assembly seats in 2018 despite its poor showing in other regions.

Suresh Pachauri (71), the man who challenged Uma Bharti

Pachauri has served as a Union MoS in various ministries and was a Rajya Sabha MP for four straight terms. He started his political career as a Youth Congress worker in 1972 and rose to become the state Youth Congress president in 1984. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1984 and was re-elected in 1990, 1996, and 2002. He held various portfolios as a Union MoS — such as defence, personnel, public grievances and pensions, and parliamentary affairs — and was also the chairman of the Congress Seva Dal, a grassroots outfit of the party.

Pachauri has contested elections only twice in his political career. In 1999, he challenged BJP’s Uma Bharti for the Bhopal Lok Sabha seat and lost by more than 1.6 lakh votes. He unsuccessfully contested the 2013 Assembly elections from Bhojpur against Surendra Patwa, a minister in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government and the nephew of late CM Sunderlal Patwa.