The Hindu : National : Uma magic holds in M.P.

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 14, 2004

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National

Uma magic holds in M.P.

By Our Staff Correspondent

BHOPAL, MAY 13. The Bharatiya Janata Party has bagged 25 of the 29 Lok Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh, while the Congress has won four.

The president of the BJP's State unit, Kailash Joshi, has registered the biggest victory margin. He defeated his nearest Congress rival, Sajid Ali, in Bhopal by a margin of 3.06 lakh votes. The party's national general secretary, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, won the Vidisha seat by a margin of 2.5 lakh votes.

What has come as a feather in the Congress cap, after the recent rout in the Assembly elections, is the party's victory in Gwalior. This was a seat represented by Jai Bhan Singh Pawaiya of the BJP in the dissolved House. While in the 1999 elections, he won the seat by a margin of over 83,000 votes, in the 1998 polls he was narrowly defeated by the late Madhavrao Scindia. In this election, Mr. Pawaiya was defeated by Ram Sevak Singh of the Congress by 35,864 votes.

The senior Congress leader, Kamal Nath, has retained the Chhindwara seat. He defeated the BJP's Prahlad Patel, by a margin of 63,739 votes. Similarly, the Guna seat has been retained for the second consecutive time by the Congress leader, Jyotiraditya Scindia. He defeated his nearest rival, Harivallabh Shukla of the BJP by a reduced victory margin of 86,350 votes. Jhabua is another important tribal seat that has been retained by the Congress. The BJP had set its sights on this reserved constituency bordering Gujarat, and its cadres, including those from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Hindu Jagran Manch, were working actively in this area. The BJP's support base had been expanding in Jhabua till recently and this was amply reflected in the 2003 Assembly polls in which the BJP won seven of the eight Assembly seats falling within this constituency.

The BJP has retained all the seats it held last time except Gwalior. It has also captured the Khajuraho, Rewa, Rajgarh, Khargone and Dhar seats from the Congress. Significantly, the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, had launched her election campaign in the State by starting her road show through the Khandwa-Khargone belt to reach out to the villagers.

This time, the Rajgarh seat has been retained by the BJP candidate, Laxman Singh, younger brother of the former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh. Earlier, he had represented the seat on the Congress ticket.

The Congress rout has been total in the Vindhya region. All the four seats in this area bordering Uttar Pradesh — Satna, Sidhi, Rewa and Shahdol — have gone to the BJP.

However, the BJP managed to establish its supremacy by capturing the Rewa seat from the Congress and retaining the other three by a convincing margin.

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