BJP appoints poll in-charges for 4 states; Pralhad Joshi to oversee Rajasthan, Bhupender Yadav Madhya Pradesh

Tribune News Service

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, July 7

The BJP on Friday sounded the poll bugle by appointing in-charges for election-bound Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana.

Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi will be election in-charge for Rajasthan, with former Gujarat deputy chief minister Nitin Patel and former two-term Lok Sabha MP from Haryana Kuldeep Bishnoi as co-incharge.

Veteran BJP Rajasthan leader Om Mathur will be the Chhattisgarh election in-charge of the party with Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya co-chief.

In Madhya Pradesh, where Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan faces 18 years of anti-incumbency having served four times since 2005, election will be overseen by Union Environment and Labour Minister Bhupender Yadav and Union Railway and IT Minister Ashwani Vaishnaw.

Former Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar will be the BJP in-charge for Telangana elections along with national general secretary in-charge of the state Sunil Bansal.

The BJP is hoping to dislodge CM Ashok Gehlot-led Congress Government in Rajasthan where the trend is to alternate power every five years; beat anti-incumbency in Madhya Pradesh; fight an aggressive CM Bhupesh Baghel who heads the Congress Government in Chhattisgarh and strive to garner as much anti ruling party -- BRS -- vote in Telangana as possible.

Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had lost all these four states in the 2018 poll cycle.

In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP formed the government in March 2020 under Chouhan, bolstered by the exit of the then Madhya Pradesh Congress stalwart Jyotiraditya Scindia from the party. Scindia had joined the BJP with 22 rebel MLAs.

He was rewarded with a ministerial berth in July 2021, when the sole Cabinet reshuffle under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's second term, happened.

In 2018, the BJP had won 108 seats out of 230 in Madhya Pradesh and the Congress, with 114, had formed the government with the support of the BSP, SP and some Independents but was destabilised in 2020 by Scindia-led defections.

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