Bhopal, May 16 (Inditop) The Congress Saturday sprang a surprise in Madhya Pradesh by taking a lead in 12 out of 29 parliamentary constituencies in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ruled state.
Out of the 13 constituencies for which the results were declared by 4 p.m., the Congress had won seven while it was leading in five more. In the last Lok Sabha elections, the Congress had won only four seats.
“No one had expected such a spectacular performance from the Congress given the fact that it was badly trounced in the state assembly elections held six months ago. Also, it was not expected to cross its previous tally of four given the infighting in the state Congress,” said poll analyst Girija Shankar.
Attributing the improved performance of the party to the hard work by workers and senior leaders, Madhya Pradesh Congress president Suresh Pachouri said: “People of the state who were fed up with the BJP misrule have re-imposed their faith in Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi.”
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that the trends of the Lok Sabha results in the state is not as per the ruling BJP’s expectations and the exact reasons behind the party’s unexpected show would be analysed after all the results are out. “It is too early to say anything at this point of time. Let the complete results come and then we will analyse where we went wrong”, he told IANS over phone.
Prominent Congress winners included central minister Kamal Nath who won for the eighth time from Chhindwara; Narain Singh who trounced Laxman Singh (BJP), brother of Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh; Meenakshi Natrajan who defeated veteran BJP leader Laxmi Narain Pande (eight time sitting MP from Mandsaur); Kantilal Bhuria who defeated BJP stalwart Dilip Singh Bhuria from Dhar-Jhabua; Premchand Guddu who defeated former union minister Satyanarain Jatia of the BJP; Gajendra Singh from Dhar and Arun Yadav from Khandwa.
The BJP candidates whose victory is clear include Sushama Swaraj from Vidisha, Kailash Joshi from Bhopal, Yashodhara Raje Scindia from Gwalior, Rakesh Singh from jabalpur, Jyoti Durve from Betul, Jeetendra Bundela from Khajuraho.
