After sweeping Madhya Pradesh in the Assembly elections last year, defying pollsters who predicted a close race for the state or called it in favour of the Congress, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) set sights on delivering all 29 Lok Sabha seats in the state to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, helping him return for a third straight term in office.
Now, with just days to go for the Lok Sabha elections, the question that may have crossed many minds is whether the BJP is poised to go one better than last time, in 2019, when it almost pulled off a clean sweep in Madhya Pradesh, winning 28 of 29 seats in the state.
Also, having fared dismally in the Assembly elections and suffering a big jolt just ahead of the general elections after former Union Minister and top Congress leader Suresh Pachouri switched sides and embraced saffron, can the grand old party harbour hopes of scripting a turnaround and giving the BJP a run for its money in the state?
An opinion poll survey by ABP-CVoter has offered insight into whether the BJP is on course to better its 2019 haul in the key heartland state.
According to the survey, the saffron party is set to bag 28 seats, maintaining the status quo, leaving one for Congress. Also, the BJP is projected to get 57.9% of vote share as compared to Oppositon alliance, which will get 40.8%, as per the survey.
Addressing reporters after being the latest big name in the Congress to desert the party ahead of the general elections, Pachouri blamed his exit on the decision by the party heavyweights to turn down the invitation to the ‘Pran Pratishtha’ of Lord Ram in Ayodhya on December 22, last year.
Accusing the Congress high command of drifting from its core ideals and principles and shifting towards "divisive politics", the former Union Minister was quoted by ANI as telling reporters, “Some of the decision-making by the Congress high command, especially on religious and political matters, drove me closer to the edge and eventually exit the party.”
Sharing his misgivings over certain "derogatory remarks" that he claimed were made at a Congress event, the senior leader told ANI, “I will not stand with those who do not respect Ram-ji.”
While Congress lost power midway into its tenure in Madhya Pradesh after edging out BJP in a close fight in the 2018 state elections, largely on account of a rebellion by senior leader and former Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, the saffron party, which was the incumbent force going into the 2022 polls, stormed back to power riding on a decisive mandate.
In results that left many pollsters in disbelief, the BJP won 163 out of 230 Assembly seats in the state, cruising past the halfway mark, while the Congress’s tally came down to double digits, at 66.
[Disclaimer: Current survey findings and projections are based on CVoter Opinion Poll Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) conducted among 41,762 adults, all confirmed voters. The surveys were conducted from February 1 to March 10, 2024. The data is weighted to the known demographic profile of the States. Sometimes the table figures do not sum to 100 due to the effects of rounding. The final data has socio-economic profiles within +/- 1% of the demographic profile of the states. We believe this will give the closest possible trends. The sample spread is across all 543 electoral constituencies in the country. The margin of error is +/- 5% and the vote share projections have been done with 95% confidence interval.]