LS polls: Congress names 12 candidates for MP; Digvijaya from Rajgarh

Bhopal: The Congress on Saturday announced candidates for 12 seats in Madhya Pradesh, fielding veteran Digvijaya Singh from his home turf Rajgarh and former Union minister Kantilal Bhuria from Ratlam.

With this, the party has announced the names of candidates for 22 of the state's 29 Lok Sabha seats.

Digvijaya Singh represented Rajgarh in the Lok Sabha in 1984 and 1991 before becoming the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. Singh's home town Raghogarh is part of this LS seat. He will be up against the BJP's Rodmal Nagar, who won from the seat in 2014 and 2019.

Singh, a former chief minister, was defeated in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Bhopal by BJP's Pragya Singh Thakur, an accused in the Malegaon blast case, by a huge margin of 3.65 lakh votes.

Bhuria, who has been given a ticket from Ratlam, has been MP from the seat for five terms but tasted defeat in the 2019 polls at the hands of BJP's Guman Singh Damor by margin of more than 90,000 votes.

The Congress has fielded Akshay Bam from Indore and Arun Shrivastava from Bhopal, while it has given tickets to Phundelal Singh Marko, sitting MLA of Pushprajgarh, from Shahdol (ST) LS seat, and Tarana MLA Mahesh Parmar from Ujjain.

Former MLAs Nilam Mishra will fight on a Congress ticket from Rewa, Sanjay Sharma from Hoshangabad and Dilip Singh Gurjar from Mandsaur.

The opposition party has fielded Guddu Raja Bundela from Sagar, Dinesh Yadav from Jabalpur and Samrat Saraswat from Balaghat.

Incidentally, Nilam Mishra was a former BJP MLA from Semaria and joined the Congress before the 2023 Assembly polls. Her husband Abhay Mishra is Congress MLA from this seat.

The party is yet to announce candidates for Khandwa, Vidisha, Damoh, Guna, Gwalior and Morena LS seats.

Khajuraho seat has been given to the Samajwadi Party by the Congress as part of an alliance between the two parties.