It was a mixed bag for both Congress and BJP in the by-elections held at Vijaypur and Budhni assembly constituencies. The results were out on Saturday and Vijapur was won by Congress, while BJP succeeded in retaining Budhni with a comparartively thin margin.
The state’s forest minister and first-time BJP candidate Ramniwas Rawat was defeated by Congress’s first-time tribal candidate Mukesh Malhotra by 7315 votes.
Rawat, the veteran OBC politician from the Gwalior-Chambal region, a five-termMLA as Congress candidate had switched over to the BJP during the Lok Sabha polls, while ex-BJP man Malhotra had joined the Congress during the same elections.
The by-poll was necessitated by Rawat’s resignation as Congress MLA from the seat in July. After the defeat he will now have to quit as minister.
Interestingly, it was Malhotra who had during 2023 assembly elections, remained on third with more than 44,000 votes , as an independent candidate, after being denied a ticket by BJP.
The absence of a BSP candidate had secured over 34,000 votes in the 2023 polls, seems to have helped Malhotra’s cause by possibly consolidating the tribal, scheduled caste Jatav community votes and Muslim community votes, which collectively accounted for 38% of the total votes in the constituency.
Importantly, the November 13 by-poll in Vijaypur, which saw 77 per cent polling, was marred by incidents of violence, particularly in the tribal, Jatav and Muslim-dominated villages of Sheopur district. The Congress’s state leadership, while accusing the BJP workers of stopping the tribal Dalits and Muslims from voting, had demanded a re-poll in 37 polling booths, but added that it would still win the by-poll in Vijaypur.
BJP retained Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s pocket-borough, but a comparatively low margin
Budhni seat of Sehore district, the home seat and bastion of ex-MP CM and present union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, saw Chouhan’s loyalist BJP nominee Ramakant Bhargava defeat the 1993 Congress winner Rajkumar Patel (considered ex-CM Digvijaya Singh’s loyalist) by 13,901 votes. But the victory margin for Bhargava was more than nine times lower than Chouhan's 2023 assembly polls margin of 1.04 lakh-plus votes from the seat.
