The State goes to the polls for the third and last phase on Thursday. The BJP concentrated on the Nimar region, which encompasses the south-western parts of the state, where elections for 10 parliamentary seats will be held in this phase on April 24.
According to BJP election managers, Nimar was their weakest point in the last general election and so they put their best efforts to dent the Congress in this region. Out of the 10 seats that will go to the polls on April 24, six, including Dewas, Ujjain, Mandsaur, Ratlam, Dhar and Khandwa were won by the Congress in 2009, while the remaining four Betul, Vidisha, Indore and Khargone went to the BJP.
This time, along with its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and party patriarch lK Advani, the state BJP pressed into action its most prominent and popular face, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who was asked to take the maximum number of public rallies in these 10 seats.
Advani addressed two rallies in Khargone and Ratlam, while Modi rounded off his Madhya Pradesh campaign by addressing two rallies in Khandwa and Betul. With just two days to go for the election, Chouhan addressed 30 rallies and done a roadshow in Vidisha, from where the leader of Opposition in Parliament, Sushma Swaraj is contesting.
Chouhan, who has done more than 100 rallies all over the state in the run-up to the general elections, has so far shied away from doing a roadshow, but finally done it in Vidisha.
“He is not an advocate of a roadshow-like campaigning style and believes one-to-one interactions are more beneficial. However, with Swaraj contesting against laxman Singh (Congress candidate and brother of former CM Digvijaya Singh) from Vidisha, we do not want to take any chance and hence have organized a roadshow to reach out to everyone”, a party functionary said.
On the other hand, the Congress’ campaign in these seats was mostly carried out by local leaders and only two rallies of party president Sonia Gandhi in Neemuch and Mandsaur were held during the entire poll campaign while party vice-president Rahul Gandhi addressed a rally in Dhar on Sunday.
Defending the Congress’ comparatively lacklustre campaign and the relatively less number of rallies done by the top leadership, party leaders said its local leaders were capable of handling the campaigning.
State Congress spokesman Pankaj Chaturvedi said, “Soniaji visited the state twice and Rahulji came to the state on four occasions to attend political rallies. They also had to go to other parts of the country, hence they were not able to give more time to MP.”