Lok Sabha Elections: The Bharatiya Janata Party released its list of 40-star campaigners for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday night. The list included the saffron party's heavyweights, like Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharti is missing from the BJP’s list. However, the saffron party has picked Suresh Pachauri, who recently switched over from Congress, for the job.
Notably, Uma Bharti, who had led the BJP to victory in the 2003 assembly polls, had also failed to make it to the BJP’s list of star campaigners during the 2023 state polls.
Earlier this month, the senior BJP leader said that she would not contest polls for the next two years and instead work to rejuvenate the Ganga river, but she also made it clear that she won't retire from politics.
Besides MP Chief Minister Mohan Yadav, the list of campaigners also includes his counterparts Yogi Adityanath (Uttar Pradesh) Bhajanlal Sharma (Rajasthan), Bhupendra Patel (Gujarat) Himanta Biswa Sarma (Assam), Vishnu Deo Sai (Chhattisgarh). BJP chief JP Nadda, party's state unit president VD Sharma, Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Faggan Singh Kulaste, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Smriti Irani and Virendra Kumar Khatik are among the 40 key figures chosen to campaign for its candidates.
Polling on 29 seats of MP will be held in four phases – April 19, April 26, May 7 and May 13.
MP’s deputy CMs Jagdish Devda and Rajendra Shukla, and their peers Devendra Fadnavis (Maharashtra) and Keshav Prasad Maurya (Uttar Pradesh), are also on the list. The list also includes ex-CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan and MP cabinet ministers like Prahlad Patel, Kailash Vijayvargiya, Aidal Singh Kansana, and Tulsi Silawat.
Former state ministers Gopal Bhargava and Narottam Mishra, and Union ex-minister Satyanarayan Jatia have also been picked to do the job. Of the 29 seats in the state, the saffron party won 28 in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, with the remaining seat – Chhindwara – going to Congress’ Nakul Nath.