Lok Sabha elections 2019: Digvijaya Singh picks BJP bastion Bhopal in ‘tough seat’ gauntlet
Bhopal Lok Sabha seat is one of the toughest seats for the Congress, which has not won this seat in over three decades.
lok sabha elections Updated: Mar 23, 2019 17:38 ISTSenior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh will be the Congress candidate from Bhopal Lok Sabha seat in the upcoming parliamentary polls. This was announced on Saturday by Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath.
“The central election campaign committee of the party has decided that Digvijaya Singh will contest from Bhopal. He was given the option to contest from Indore, Jabalpur or Bhopal. Later, it was decided that he will be the Congress candidate from Bhopal,” news agency IANS quoted Kamal Nath as saying.
This comes a week after Kamal Nath threw a “challenge” to Digvijaya Singh asking him to contest the Lok Sabha polls from the toughest seat for the Congress in Madhya Pradesh. On Monday, Digvijaya Singh responded to Kamal Nath tweeting, “Accepting challenges is my habit.”
Bhopal Lok Sabha seat is one of the toughest seats for the Congress, which has not won this seat in over three decades. The last time that a Congress candidate won from Bhopal Lok Sabha constituency was in 1984 when former President Shankar Dayal Sharma had secured this seat for the party.
This could be the first election contested by Digvijaya Singh in 16 years. After losing power in Madhya Pradesh in 2003 to the BJP, Digvijaya Singh had taken a ‘sanyas’ from electoral politics for 10 years. He did not contest the 2014 Lok Sabha polls or the 2018 Madhya Pradesh assembly election.
Digvijaya Singh, a sitting Rajya Sabha MP, has previously contested the Lok Sabha elections from Rajgarh parliamentary constituency. He won the Rajgarh seat for the Congress twice in 1984 and 1991. In 1984, Digvijaya Singh was the first Congress leader to win that seat for the party.
When he was the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh for 10 years between 1993 and 2003, Digvijaya Singh was an MLA from Rajgarh assembly constituency. The BJP ruled the state after 2003 for 15 years before the Congress won the state back in last year’s assembly polls.
In 2014 Lok Sabha election, the BJP had won 27 of 29 parliamentary seats while the Congress could win only two. Madhya Pradesh will vote in four of the seven phases of the Lok Sabha polls on April 29, May 6, 12 and 19.
First Published: Mar 23, 2019 17:38 IST