The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has exposed chinks in the Congress armour in Madhya Pradesh by not only retaining the Mandsaur and Shajapur nagar palikas (municipalities), but also wresting the Sehore nagar palika from the Congress.
Of the five nagar panchayats, results for which came in on Saturday, the BJP has won three. These are Harpalpur in Chhatarpur district, Orcha in Tikamgarh district and Shahganj in Sehore district. The Congress Party has won the Bhedaghat nagar panchayat while Majhouli nagar Panchayat has gone to an Independent candidate.
The BJP had left no stone unturned for these elections. While state BJP president Prabhat Jha was spearheading the ruling party campaign, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had also led road shows to ensure his party’s victory in these elections. From the Congress side, party MP Sajjan Singh Verma was leading the campaign in Shajapur, another Congress MP Meenakshi Natrajan was supervising the Congress campaign in Mandsaur and state party chief Suresh Pachouri was active in Sehore.
BJP leaders here are describing their party’s victory in Mandsaur and Shajapur as very significant. The BJP had won the Mandsaur and Shajapur parliamentary seats in the 2004 elections but in 2009, it lost to the Congress Party both Mandsaur and Dewas. Due to delimitation process, the Shajapur constituency ceased to exist as it was merged in the new Lok Sabha constituency of Dewas. While a Congress spokesman here said that these elections were fought on local issues and nothing much should be read in the outcome of the civic polls, there is a section in the state Congress that feels that the debacle in these elections is more due to infighting and groupism within the party.
A state Congress office-bearer, on condition of anonymity, said that senior party leaders should desist from making statements that polarise the voters on religious lines and focus efforts to build party unity.