With a narrow victory in the Assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Chhattisgarh is now wary of offering lok Sabha tickets to its MlAs who lost out in the polls.
Party sources here informed that both the State and central leadership of the party is unequivocal in their belief that those MlAs who lost out in the just concluded Assembly polls may still be lying very low in the popularity index among the electorate who have been rejected by them in the first place for a better candidate during the Assembly polls.
However, a section of the State level party leaders are still insisting on bringing some of the former MlAs on board by offering them another chance as they had been ministers with not so bad record of work during their last tenure as MlAs. The anti-incumbency factor is still fresh in the minds of the electorate in Chhattisgarh particularly with the candidates who lost in the Assembly polls and are likely to be rejected again in lok Sabha polls even if they choose a parliamentary constituency far away from the last Assembly segment they contested polls. Neither is the party appearing keen on fielding a ‘sitting MlA’ to contest from a lok Sabha seat barring exceptions as some leaders believe it was not a ‘clean sweep’ for the party during Assembly polls and the Assembly seat vacated may be put to unnecessary risk of being won by the rival party candidate, party sources informed.
With the BJP’s Chhattisgarh unit’s ‘Election Committee Meeting’ expected on March 8, both the core State and central leadership of the party already have a ‘tentative list’ of candidates waiting to be deliberated upon in the meeting. However, party sources stated that the usual line-up of candidates for lok Sabha namely– Ramesh Bais from Raipur, Saroj Pandey from Durg, Dinesh Kashyap from Bastar, Vishnudev Sai from Raigarh, Madhusudan Yadav from Nandgaon and Kamla Devi Patle from Janjgir-Champa is likely to remain intact.
It was said that dilemma is prevailing with the candidature of the sitting MP, Chandulal Sahu, from Mahasamund constituency. From here, the name of Dhamtari district Panchayat President Balaram Sahu is also in circulation. Moreover, after the demise of Murarilal Singh, the search for a new candidate for Sarguja seat is underway where Prabal Pratap Singh Judeo, the son of late MP Dilip Singh Judeo had claimed his candidature, sources informed.