Triangular fights, slim margins: A look at MP seats where rebels may swing the fray

Upset over denial of tickets, several leaders from the BJP and the Congress have either joined other parties or entered the fray as Independents. These rebel leaders have emerged as a significant factor in the polls, upsetting some of their calculations in a largely bipolar battle. Here is a look at some of the seats where these rebels may play a key role.

BJP

Burhanpur

Harshvardhan Singh, the son of former BJP state president and five-time MP Nand Kumar Chauhan, is contesting as an Independent from the Burhanpur seat.

Singh had also sought the ticket for the Khandwa Lok Sabha seat in 2019, but did not get it. He was vying for the ticket from Burhanpur but lost out to Archana Chitnis, a two-time MLA from this seat. Chitnis had lost the last election by a narrow margin of 5,120 votes and Singh was under the impression that she would not be fielded again.

Sidhi

A man said to be close to sitting MLA Kedarnath Shukla, who won the Sidhi seat four times, was accused of being the perpetrator in the incident of urination on a tribal man.

The BJP has replaced Shukla with Lok Sabha MP Riti Pathak, also a member of the Brahmin community, from the seat.

Brahmin voters hold sway in this region and the BJP might have to worry about the community’s vote splitting, considering the influence Shukla has in the area.

Morena

Former BJP minister Rustam Singh’s son Rakesh Singh will be contesting the Morena seat as a BSP candidate. The father-son duo resigned from the BJP after the party fielded Raghuraj Kansana from Morena.

Kansana was earlier with the Congress and joined the BJP in 2020, when Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia switched to the saffron party. He lost the subsequent bypoll by a margin of 5,751 votes.

Party insiders say the Singh family enjoys a support base in the Gurjar community, which forms a substantial chunk of the local population.

Bhind

Sitting MLA Sanjeev Singh was at the centre of a Congress campaign that targeted the BJP over alleged corruption, with seven of the 10 toppers in the patwari (revenue officer) exam emerging from a test centre owned by Singh.

He ended up losing the ticket and returned to the BSP with which he started his career. He will now face off against BJP candidate Narendra Singh Kushwaha, who won the 2013 elections against him.

Satna

Former BJP district vice president Ratnakar Chaturvedi joined the BSP and will take on the BJP’s four-time Lok Sabha MP Ganesh Singh. Brahmin voters play a crucial role in this region and Chaturvedi, who is also from the community, may “eat into the BJP’s upper caste votes as well as get the BSP’s votes,” as per a local leader.

Rajnagar (Chhatarpur)

BJP leader and ex-president of Khajuraho Development Authority, Ghasiram Patel, joined the BSP last month. He

was a two-time BJP district president and is expected to cut into the Patel vote base as a BSP nominee. The Congress is betting on its incumbent Rajnagar MLA Nati Raja, who in 2018 won by just 732 votes. The BSP had then come third.

Congress

Nagod (Satna)

Yadvendra Singh, a former MLA from the Nagod constituency, resigned from the Congress after being denied a ticket and joined the BSP. He had won the seat in 2013 but lost it in 2018 by 1,133 votes. The Congress has now fielded Rashmi Singh, who got 25,700 votes as an Independent in 2018. The region is dominated by Rajput voters. Yadvendra might have an edge on the BSP ticket, with the party getting 22, 428 votes on its own in 2018.

Dr Ambedkar Nagar (Mhow)

Former Congress leader Antar Singh Darbar had been winning the seat since 1998, until it was wrested from him by BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya in 2013. In the following election, he lost the seat to the BJP’s Usha Thakur by a margin of 7,157 votes.

Denied the ticket this time, Darbar has now decided to contest as an Independent. He is expected to eat into votes of Congress candidate Ramashankar Shukla, who had left the BJP and joined the Congress.

Alot (Ratlam)

Former MP Premchand Guddu is now contesting as an Independent from Alot after resigning from the Congress. Ahead of the 2018 polls, he parted ways with the Congress and had joined the BJP. He returned to the Congress and unsuccessfully contested a bypoll from Sanwer in Indore. The sitting Congress MLA of Alot, Manoj Chawla, won in 2018 by 5,448 votes and has been fielded again.

Teonthar (Rewa)

Siddharth Tiwari, the grandson of Congress stalwart late Sriniwas Tiwari, joined the BJP on October 19 after losing out the ticket from this seat to Ramashankar Singh. Singh had contested the 2018 polls on a Congress ticket, losing by 5,343 votes.

Sumawali (Morena)

Sitting MLA Adal Singh Kushwaha walked over to the BSP after losing the nomination to Kuldeep Sikarwar. However, in a “course correction”, the Congress gave its ticket to Kushwaha, who returned to the party. An emotional Sikarwar questioned why he was fielded in the first place and joined hands with the BSP to take on Kushwaha. In 2018, BJP candidate Ajab Singh Kushwaha lost by 13,313 votes. The BSP had polled 31,331 votes.

Pohari (Shivpuri)

Pradhumna Verma joined the BSP as he lost the Congress ticket to Kailash Kushwaha.

However, Verma, who belongs to the same community as sitting BJP MLA Suresh Dhakad, is said to have the potential to eat into his votes as well as that of the Congress candidate. In 2018, the BSP candidate came second in this seat and polled 52,736 votes. Dhakad had then won by 7,918 votes.

Jatara (Tikamgarh)

R R Bansal had lost the 2018 election by a margin of 36,715 votes and it was clear that he was not going to be fielded by the Congress again. The party has now chosen Kiran Ahirwar. Bansal has joined the Samajwadi Party (SP), which got 21,040 votes in the last election.

The BJP has fielded its sitting MLA Harishankar Khatik.

Gotegaon (Narsinghpur)

The Congress had denied a ticket to its sitting MLA and former Assembly speaker NP Prajapati, giving it instead to Shekhar Choudhary. However, after Prajapati’s supporters protested, he got the ticket.

Choudhary is now contesting as an Independent and fancies his chances in a swing seat, in which the incumbent candidate has seldom been re-elected.