The AICC on Saturday declared its 22 candidates in Madhya Pradesh for the upcoming lok Sabha elections. The party expressed confidence on all the sitting members in the exercise. Candidates on the remaining seven seats that were difficult are likely to be declared after a few days.
Congress has fielded former legislator PC Sharma from Bhopal, Govind Singh Rajput from Sagar, Kamleshwar Verma from Tikamgarh, Bhagirath Prasad from Bhind, Jyotiraditya Scindia from Guna, Sajjan Singh Verma from Dewas, Mahendra Pratap from Damoh, Raja Pateria from Khajuraho, Sundarlal Tiwari from Rewa, Meenakshi Natrajan from Mandsaur, Arun Yadav from Khandwa, Ashok Singh from Gwalior, Indrajeet Patel from Sidhi, Rajesh Nandini Singh from Shahdol, Vivek Tankha from Jabalpur, Rahul Chowdhry from Betul, Hina Kanwre from Balaghat, Kamalnath from Chhindwara, Premchand Guddu from Ujjain, Kantilal Bhuria from Ratlam, Ramesh Patel from Khargone and Satyanarayan Patel from Indore.
The Congress party taking lessons from the humiliating defeat it suffered in the Assembly elections held in November last year due to late declaration of the candidates has taken lead this time from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in declaring the candidates for lok Sabha. This is for the first time that the Congress declared its list of candidates before BJP. However, it would be litmus test for the sitting parliamentarians of the grand old party to retain their seats as strong anti-incumbency sentiment is prevailing across the country against the Congress.
The Congress had 12 MPs from the State in the outgoing lok Sabha, of the dozen MPs of Congress from the State one MP Rao Uday Pratap Singh of Hoshangabad left the party to Join BJP before the Assembly elections of the State. Madhya Pradesh sends 29 parliamentarians to the lok Sabha.