As many as 19 seats, spreading across seven districts in Madhya Pradesh, are reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) from where no candidate from general category is eligible to contest elections.
Out of 230 Assembly seats in the State, 148 have been earmarked for general category, 35 for Scheduled Castes while rest 47 constituencies have been reserved for ST.
As per the statistics, provided by the Election Commission, Barwani district has four seats which are reserved for ST while Shahdol, Mandla and Jhabua have three such seats and Umaria, Dindori and Alirajpur districts have two seats each are reserved for ST.
Similarly, 35 seats in 33 districts have been reserved for Scheduled Castes candidates. On the other hand, there are two districts where all five seats are reserved for general candidates only.
Sheopur District's Vijaypur and Sheopur seats and Neemuch District's Manasa, Neemuch and Javad seats are allotted to the general category.
Political observers said the ST and SC seats play an important role for the party that wants to come to power.
Hence, both the BJP and the Congress try their best to register win from these 82 seats. In the 2008 elections, the ruling BJP captured 93 (General), 28 (ST) and 31 (SC) seats and the party would left no stone unturned to retain these seats and would also try to increase the number.