The Congress party on Sunday released the list of 144 candidates for the upcoming Madhya Pradesh assembly elections.
Madhya Pradesh is going to polls on November 17 on its 230 assembly seats. The counting of votes will take place on December 3.
Of the 144 candidates, 69 are sitting MLAs and include some of the well-known names like Madhya Pradesh Congress chief and former Chief Minister Kamal Nath and Leader of Opposition Govind Singh along with a number of former ministers.
The Congres party has fielded actor Vikram Mastal against Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Shivraj is currently in his fourth term as the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and has ruled the state for 16 of the past 18 years. The two-year gap came when Kamal Nath was Madhya Pradesh's CM after the victory in 2018, but the government collapsed in 2020 and Shivraj became the chief minister again.
The Congress is now looking forward to wrest power from the BJP in Madhya Pradesh and set the tone for the 2024 general elections.
Here are the top leaders of Congress who have found mention in the first list of 144 candidates.
Kamal Nath
Kamal Nath is the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee President and former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh (2018-20).
Nath is a veteran politician who has been in active politics since 1970s and was one of the associates of late Sanjay Gandhi, who was highly influential when his mother Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister of India. He was elected as an MP in 1980.
Nath has been fielded from his home turn of Chhindwara this time. India TV notes that he has been elected from the seat nine times so far.
In the 1990s, Nath also served in the Congress ministries before moving to state politics. Earlier, the name of Nath has also come up for alleged participation in the anti-Sikh violence in 1984.
In recent years, Nath was also reported to be in a turf war with Rajya Sabha MP and former Madhya Pradesh CM Digvijaya Singh and Jyotiraditya Scindia. Scindia eventually rebelled and joined the BJP and currently serves as a Union minister. The Economic Times noted that the turf war and Rahul Gandhi's laxity earlier ensured only a slim win for Congress in 2018.
"The fact then party president Rahul Gandhi sat over an year on the peace formula — of making Nath PCC chief and Scindia-Digvijaya Singh campaign and coordination in-charge —meant getting just about six months for preparing the battered state Congress for the assembly polls in 2018, resulting in a marginal win that made running of his government dependent on outside support, even while facing nonstop ambushing bids that exhausted administrative focus," reported ET.
Lately, Nath has also been in the news for toying with soft Hindutva and appeasing godmen like Dheerendra Shastri to appeal to Hindu voters.
Govind Singh
Govind Singh is the Leader of Opposition in the Madhya Pradesh assembly. He is being fielded from Lahar constituency in Bhind district.
Singh had replaced Nath as the Leader of the Opposition last year when he resigned from the post to focus on his role as the state unit chief of the party.
Singh is a seven-time MLA and is a former state minister in Congress-led governments. He has won the Lahar seat since 1990.
Singh is both senior and comes from the Gwalio-Chambal region where the party had got weak after erstwhile royal and heavyweight Jyotiraditya Scindia left the party to join Congress. He is also close with both Nath and Digvijay Singh, another heavyweight in the Madhya Pradesh who was once in a turf war with Kamal Nath.
"Singh hails from the politically influential Thakur community. With the BJP having a Brahmin state president in V.D. Sharma —hailing from the neighbouring Morena district— the Congress feels it will be able to secure the Thakur vote in the [Gwalior-Chambal] region," reported India Today earlier when he was appointed as the Leader of the Opposition.
Jitu Patwari
Jitu Patwari is one of the Working Presidents of the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee.
Patwari is considered to be close to Rahul Gandhi and served as a minister in the Nath ministry during 2018-20.
In the run-up to the elections, Patwari was made the co-chief of the publicity committee of the party. Navbharat Times reported that he also played a leading role in the Congress party's Jan Akrosh Yatra taken out earlier this year.
Earlier, he was a secretary in the party organisation. He has also been district and state chiefs of the Youth Congress. He is known as a good orator and a striving politician in Madhya Pradesh. He was with Rahul Gandhi for a long time in the Bharat Jodo Yatra. He was also given big riles in Gujarat elections," reported Navbharat Times.
Patwari first came to prominence when he drove Rahul on a bike into Mandsaur where farmers were killed at an agitation in police firing.
Besides these three leaders, some other big names in the list are former ministers Ajay Singh (Churhat), Ramnivas Rawat (Vijaypur), Lakhan Singh Yadav (Bhitarwar), Harsh Yadav (Deori), Mukesh Nayak (Pawai), Kamleshwar Patel (Sihawal), etc. Digvijaya Singh's son Jaivardhan Singh and brother Lakshman Singh have also been fielded from Raghogarh and Chachoura seats. Both Jaivardhan and Lakshman are sitting MLAs.
