With the clearing of air over veteran Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader lK Advani's candidature from Bhopal, political activities in the saffron party intensified over Bhopal parliamentary constituency.
Mudslinging among the legislators and leaders from the district has started regarding the claims of ticket from here. These MlAs and other leaders are now mounting pressure on sitting MP Kailash Joshi to fight the election. Notably, Joshi had last week announced that he would leave the seat for Advani.
The BJP that is known as 'kulino ka kunba' (household of nobles) is passing through discontent right from Bhopal to New Delhi over ticket distribution.The MlAs and other leaders of the district have joined hands to stop the two youth leaders of the city from getting the ticket and have started placating Joshi to fight as Advani has agreed to fight election from Gandhinagar.
On the one hand, soon after the party decision to field Advani from Gandhinagar the top three claimants from the city for the seat including Rajya Sabha MP Anil Madhav Dave, Bhopal District BJP president Alok Sharma and Bhopal Mayor Krishna Gaur accelerated their activities for getting party ticket, while on the other, those opposing Sharma and Gaur joined hands and called on Joshi on Wednesday night and requested him to fight the election.
Sources from the saffron party told that Joshi agreed to their demand on the condition that if he gets proposal from the State leadership he would fight.Those opposing Sharma and Gaur include MlAs Rameshwar Sharma, Vishwas Sarang and Vishnu Khatri, former MlAs Jitendra Daga and Ramesh Sharma Guttu, former Corporator Ravindra Awasthi and others.
Joshi told these leaders that he would appraise his views over the candidate from Bhopal seat to state president Narendra Singh Tomar and chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and it would be the state leadership that would decide that who should contest from here.