In a departure from tradition, the Bharatiya Janata Party may declare its candidate list for the upcoming Chhattisgarh assembly polls even before the election dates are announced. Even before the Election Commission announced dates, the BJP held its first Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting in Delhi’s party headquarters to “discuss names".
A similar discussion took place for Madhya Pradesh on how to strengthen the organisation further in the run-up to the polls. Another meeting over MP is likely to take place in the next week or fortnight.
The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president JP Nadda, union home minister Amit Shah, union defence minister Rajnath Singh, general secretary (organisation) BL Santhosh, and Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, among others. Union minister Mansukh Mandaviya and Rajya Sabha member Om Mathur—who are in-charge of Chhattisgarh for the party—were also attending. So were union ministers Bhupender Yadav and Ashwini Vaishnav—in-charge of MP for the party. BJP’s chief ministerial face in Chhattisgarh—Raman Singh—was present along with other senior leaders from the state. Also in attendance was Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan with other state leaders.
BJP sources indicated that the 90 assembly seats of Chhattisgarh were categorised into 4 sections: A, B, C, and D. While ‘A’ represents seats where the BJP won and keeps winning, ‘B’ denotes constituencies where it lost once or at most twice. ‘C’ stands for those seats where the saffron party lost twice, consecutively, while ‘D’ represents the constituencies where the BJP never won and are considered opposition strongholds.
Sources said the BJP on Wednesday discussed 27 weak seats with the bulk of them from category C. They added that while no decision was taken on candidates, names proposed by the state unit were discussed at length.
According to the sources, it is unlikely that names will be announced immediately as the BJP has a system in place under which both state and districts have their own election committees, which is not the case right now in Chhattisgarh. However, sources indicated that in the coming days, the BJP leadership may unofficially communicate to certain leaders in the state that they should start campaigning in particular seats.
The idea behind this early poll committee meeting, sources said, is to let candidates have more time to prepare on the ground and exploit the edge over the opposition. Particularly, since the focus is on ‘weak’ seats, the BJP will also send central leaders to the state soon to formulate customised strategies for their constituencies, added a BJP insider.
In the 2018 assembly election, Raman Singh, faced with 15 years of anti-incumbency, was routed from the state as the Congress swept to power with 68 seats in the 90-member house. The BJP only managed to get 15 seats. Farmers and tribal voters evidently deserted the BJP in 2018. However, in the election before that, the party had won 49, the Congress 39, while one seat each was bagged by the BSP and an independent candidate. Also, a few months after the 2018 polls, the BJP netted 9 of Chhattisgarh’s 11 Lok Sabha seats.
Madhya Pradesh has been a bastion of the saffron party for a long time. The strength of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led government in the state stands at 123 in a 230-member assembly. This also includes 22 MLAs who switched over from the Congress with Jyotiraditya Scindia, resulting in the capitulation of the Kamal Nath government.
In 2018, the Congress delivered a triple blow to the BJP by winning assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh.
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