After receiving flak from the district unit, the Congress has now replaced its candidate – Awadesh Nayak — in Madhya Pradesh’s Datia seat with Rajendra Bharti. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded sitting State Home Minister and firebrand leader Narottam Mishra from the constituency.
Datia is one of the three seats which has seen a change in candidate amid the internal rift. The change is the outcome of the divide between Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh over division of tickets. After the denial of tickets to candidates such as Bharti and NP Prajapati, both the leaders apparently met Singh in state capital Bhopal later and camped in Delhi before the announcement of ticket.
Earlier, Nayak was announced as the candidate against Mishra, who was believed to be a game-changer in the constituency. Soon after his name was announced, old Congress workers in the district started to protest.
Nayak was a part of the BJP until recently, when he switched to the Congress in the presence of Nath and secured a ticket.
The replacement against Mishra has made the fight even more interesting, as during the last elections, Mishra won against Bharti with just 2,656 votes.
Bharti has earlier fought with the support of Samajwadi Party (SP) and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in the past, but has been losing the elections since 2003.
There is a sentiment in the rural side that Bharti can beat a BJP leader in the electoral fight.
Bharti has also filed a case against Mishra in a paid news case, the verdict for which was in favour of Bharti, but was challenged later.
Comments
0 comment