Bhopal, Oct 22: On Saturday, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) unveiled its fifth list of candidates for the upcoming Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, set to take place on November 17. Notably, this list retains 37 sitting MLAs while denying tickets to 29 incumbents, including three state ministers and Akash Vijayvargiya, the son of the party’s national general secretary, Kailash Vijayvargiya.
Among the state ministers who have been named as candidates are Usha Thakur, who will contest from Ambedkar Nagar, Inder Singh Parmar from Shujalpur, and Mahendra Singh Sisodia from Bamori. Ram Khilavan Patel, among others, will also represent the saffron party in these elections.
Interestingly, the BJP has opted to retain several senior leaders who are over 70 years old. For instance, Nagendra Singh ‘Nagod,’ the sitting MLA from Nagod seat in Satna district, is 80 years old. Similarly, Nagendra Singh, the sitting MLA from the Gurh seat in Rewa district, is 76 and will continue to represent the party. Sitasharan Sharma, a 73-year-old BJP leader and former speaker of the state Assembly, has been retained from the Hoshangabad seat and will face his brother, Girjashankar Sharma, the Congress candidate.
With this latest announcement, the BJP has now declared 228 candidates for the total of 230 assembly seats in Madhya Pradesh. The candidates for the remaining two seats, Guna and Vidisha, are yet to be announced.