Polling began Friday morning for assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, where 2,533 candidates, including Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his predecessor Kamal Nath, are in the fray for 230 assembly seats in a largely straight contest between the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress.
Top leaders crisscrossed the state, addressing rallies, holding road shows, trading charges, and making a slew of promises to seek votes for their candidates.
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is contesting from Budhni and state Congress president Kamal Nath from Chhindwara.
The electioneering saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president JP Nadda, Union Minister Rajnath Singh, and Chouhan, among others, address rallies to drum up support for the saffron party nominees.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and party leaders Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra, Nath, and Digvijaya Singh, among others, addressed rallies to seek support for their party nominees.
Modi made nine visits to the state and addressed 14 public meetings after the elections were announced. The BJP is heavily banking on his charisma to retain power.
A look at the constituency:
- The single-phase voting covering all 230 assembly seats—47 of them reserved for Scheduled Tribes and 35 for Scheduled Castes—has more than 5.6 crore registered electors.
- Inputs from ground zero suggest that the Gwalior-Chambal, Vindhya, and Bundelkhand regions may ultimately hold the key to who comes to power, despite the communally sensitive Malwa-Nimar region housing a maximum of 66 seats.
- Opinion polls in the recent past have been predicting a close race between both the main players (with an edge to the Congress).
- In 2018, Congress emerged as the largest party, winning 114 seats and forming the government with the support of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP).
