Polling for 9 LS seats in MP on May 7; Shivraj, Scindia, Digvijaya among bigwigs in fray

Bhopal: Voting for the third phase of Lok Sabha polls will be held on Tuesday for nine seats in Madhya Pradesh where Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and former state chief ministers Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Digvijaya Singh are in the fray.

More than 1.77 crore voters will decide the fate of 127 candidates who are contesting from the nine Lok Sabha seats - Morena, Bhind (SC-reserved), Gwalior, Guna, Sagar, Vidisha, Bhopal, Rajgarh and Betul (ST-reserved).

Voting for the third phase will be held from 7 am to 6 pm across 20,456 polling stations, including 1,043 to be entirely managed by women, an official said.

There are 1,77,52,583 eligible voters, including 92,68,987 men, 84,83,105 women and 491 transgender persons, as per official data.

At stake is the political future of BJP leader and Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, seeking to reclaim the home turf Guna which he lost in 2019 when he was in the Congress.

BJP veteran and former CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan is contesting from Vidisha constituency, a saffron fortress which he had represented multiple times in Lok Sabha in the past, after almost 17 years.

He is pitted against Congress candidate Pratap Bhanu Sharma.

In Rajgarh, Congress veteran and former CM Digvijaya Singh (77) seeks to reclaim the lost legacy, marking his return to the Lok Sabha electoral contest after more than 30 years. His challenger is two-time BJP MP Rodmal Nagar.

The BJP is hoping for a clean sweep in Madhya Pradesh, which sends 29 members to the Lok Sabha.

In 2019, the BJP failed to win the Chhindwara constituency, the only saving grace for the Congress which managed to retain it on the charisma of party veteran Kamal Nath. His son Nakul Nath won the seat last time.

In high-stake Guna, where votes of the Yadav community can tilt scales, Scindia is facing Yadvendra Singh Yadav of the Congress.

In 2019, Scindia, who was then the Congress candidate, lost his family bastion to BJP's KP Yadav.

The scion of the erstwhile royal family of Gwalior, Scindia quit the Congress in 2020 and joined the BJP.

Chouhan looks comfortably placed in Vidisha but the contest in Rajgarh may be a close one.

Digvijaya Singh won from Rajgarh in 1984 and 1991 but lost in 1989. He became the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh in 1993.

Of the total 29 seats in Madhya Pradesh, polling for 12 seats concluded in two phases on April 19 and 26.

The remaining eight seats will go to polls in the fourth phase on May 13.