MLAs from 4 states reach MP to help BJP win assembly polls

Ahead of the Madhya Pradesh elections, Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs from Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra have arrived in Bhopal as part of the ruling party's programme wherein every legislator will be allotted one assembly seat each that they are supposed to visit to take stock of the ground situation, party leaders said.

A training session for these BJP legislators from the four states began in Bhopal on Saturday, a day before they start visiting their allotted assembly seats in the state, where polls will be held by the end of the year.

There are 230 assembly segments in Madhya Pradesh.

Union Minister Bhupender Yadav, who is the BJP's election in-charge of Madhya Pradesh, inaugurated the training session for the legislators on Thur morning.

"The BJP's central leadership has decided that the party's legislators from Gujarat, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra will visit different assembly constituencies (in MP) over the next days starting Sunday," Madhya Pradesh Minister for Medical Education and BJP leader Vishvas Sarang told reporters.

The visiting legislators will take part in different programmes in their respective assembly segments allotted to them and work with a resolve for the party's victory in the assembly polls, he said.

As part of the programme, they will interact with the party's local functionaries and voters, sources said.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, party chief V D Sharma are scheduled to address the training programme, Sarang said.

Earlier on Thursday, the ruling BJP announced its first list of 39 candidates for the state assembly elections, even before the announcement of the poll schedule.

In this list, the saffron party has focused on the seats it lost in 2018 and some of them even in 2013, and has reposed faith in 14 candidates, including three former ministers, who lost last time.

In the 2018 assembly polls, the Congress had won 114 seats, while the BJP finished second with 109.

The Congress, which was two short of a simple majority, went on to form a government under the leadership of party veteran Kamal Nath with the support of Independents, the MLAs from the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party.

However, the Nath government collapsed after 15 months when a section of Congress MLAs, most of them loyal to Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, quit and joined the BJP.

The saffron party returned to power in March 2020 with Shivraj Singh Chouhan as chief minister for a fresh term.