Gandhi would hold pooja for half an hour in Ujjain’s Mahakaleshwar temple on Monday, which has a special significance in the politics of Madhya Pradesh.
PTIGandhi certainly needs the blessings for his party to win 50 seats in the key Malwa region, where Congress currently holds just four seats.
Indira Gandhi visited the Mahakaleshwar Temple in December 1979, before storming back to power. Sonia Gandhi came here in 2008, and though Congress could not win Madhya Pradesh, it won an unlikely second term at the Centre a year later. Rahul Gandhi, who will visit this prominent Shiv temple in Ujjain on Monday, is hoping for a similar miracle.
Gandhi would hold pooja for half an hour in Ujjain’s Mahakaleshwar temple on Monday, which is one of the 12 Jyotirlingas in the country and has a special significance in the politics of Madhya Pradesh. Every major political yatra or campaign begins with a darshan here – Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan began his Jan Aashirwad Yatra from here, BJP president Amit Shah came here and state Congress chief Kamal Nath in fact wrote an open letter to Lord Mahakal asking him to not bless the CM.
Gandhi, arriving at Mahakaleshwar on his first visit in this campaign to the Indore-Ujjain belt of Malwa from Monday, certainly needs the blessings for his party. In the 50 seats of the all important Malwa region through which the road to power in Bhopal usually passes, the Congress just holds four seats.
The region is BJP’s citadel with 45 seats – the party holds eight out of the nine seats in Indore, all seven seats in Ujjain, all five seats in Dewas, all five seats in Ratlam, all five seats in Shajapur, all three seats in Neemuch and five out of the seven seats in Dhar district.
Gandhi is coming to Malwa with a plan in place. He will be holding a rally in Ujjain city’s Dussehra grounds to register the party’s presence – Congress last won the Ujjain city’s north or south seat two decades ago in 1998. Gandhi’s ‘Shiv Bhakt’ credentials after his Kailash Mansarovar Yatra could add to his appeal in the Mahakal’s city, the Congress feels.
From there, Gandhi will fly out for a rally in Jhabua, a tribal-dominated district where Congress was once strong but holds none of three STreserved seats now.
In Indore on Monday evening Gandhi will try to rejuvenate Congress cadre in this important district where Congress holds just one of the nine seats.
PTI
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