For Congress, it may not be easy to repeat Assembly performance

Despite the impressive show in the not-so-distant Assembly elections, it may not be easy for the Congress to repeat the same performance in the present polls.

Madhya Pradesh witnessed a major electoral upheaval when the Congress ousted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Shivraj Singh Chouhan in the recent assembly elections. The victory in the state after 15 years on the sidelines marked a comeback for the party in the saffron belt, though it could not get absolute majority in the Assembly.
Despite the impressive show in the not-so-distant Assembly elections, it may not be easy for the Congress to repeat the same performance in the present polls. This is despite the fact that the Congress has fulfilled one of its main poll promises - loan waivers for farmers.
The state has 29 parliamentary constituencies which will go to polls in four phases. There are three dominant parties in the state - the BJP, the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). In 2014 elections, the BJP swept the polls, with 27 seats while the Congress could get only two seats.
This time, veteran Congress leader Digvijay Singh is contesting from Bhopal, the stronghold of the BJP since 1989. The development assumes significance in the wake of the recent so-called ego clash between Singh and Chief Minister Kamal Nath after the latter said Singh should contest from a 'tough' constituency like Indore and Vidisha where the Congress has not won since 1984 parliamentary elections. Singh has replied back to Nath's taunt with a tweet - "With the blessings of the people of Raghogarh, I had managed to win even during the 1977 wave of Janata Party. I am ready to contest the Lok Sabha elections from wherever my leader Rahul Gandhi asks me to."
This political skirmish indicates the return of factionalism in MP Congress that could hurt the party's prospects in the elections.
Bhopal is a tough battlefield for the Congress because it had been a BJP's bastion for the last 30 years. Cricket legend Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, who fought on Congress ticket in 1989, lost to a retired Madhya Pradesh chief secretary Susheel Chandra Verna by over 80,000 votes. For the BJP, it has become a prestigious contest with the party picking Malegaon blast accused Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur to take on the Congress stalwart. The BJP intends to rally its extremist base by choosing a hardcore Hindu hardliner in a cow belt constituency. Sadhvi is yet to be acquitted in the case related to the blast that ostensibly targeted Muslim community.
The Congress has fielded Jyotiraditya Scindia from Guna where he will face Dr K P Yadav. BJP's eight-time MP from Indore constituency and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan has announced that she will not contest elections this time. The BJP is yet choose her replacement while the Congress has picked Pankaj Sanghvi, who rose from the ranks of the party in Indore as a student leader. Though he suffered a string of electoral losses, he is a well-known leader in the constituency and gave a tough fight in the last election against Mahajan.
Sushma Swaraj who was an MP from Vidisha has also dropped out. Ramakant Bhargav has been named as her replacement.
The BSP-SP combine is also contesting polls, with the Samajwadi (SP) fighting on 3 seats and the BSP on 26 seats despite the fact that the Kamal Nath government is being propped up by the two parties. The BSP-SP combine could divide the anti-BJP vote, indirectly helping the BJP in a triangular contest. Interestingly, in 2014 elections both the parties failed to open their accounts in the state.
But some of the factors like Muslim vote could play a significant role in Congress' chances of winning the polls. It was in this context that Kamal Nath's video went viral ahead of the last assembly elections in which he was allegedly telling a delegation of Muslim clerics that the party needed 90 per cent vote in Muslim-dominated areas, otherwise it could be a huge loss for the party.
Madhya Pradesh is a typical cow belt state with a strong preference for saffron politics. But in the recent assembly elections, it suffered a defeat because of strong anti-incumbency born out of a prolonged rule. In this election, it will make a strong effort to regain its glory and put behind the assembly defeat as a bad memory.
sohail@khaleejtimes.com

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