The lok Sabha election results scheduled to be out on May 16, besides deciding the fate of the next Government of the country, would also decide the fortune of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's nationwide experiment that was started in January called 'primaries.'
The candidates from two of the total 29 parliamentary constituencies of Madhya Pradesh - Indore and Mandsaur - were decided under RG's ambitious programme called 'primary.'
The primaries, an internal election process, were adopted to select former MlA Satyanarayan Patel for the Indore seat against seven-time BJP MP Sumitra Mahajan. It was for the second time when Patel was fielded consecutively against veteran BJP leader who defeated him by 11480 votes in 2009.
While, the Congress secretary and sitting parliamentarian from Mandsaur, Meenakshi Natarajan, was also selected as a candidate for this seat through the 'primary' system. She had defeated senior BJP leader and eight times Mandsaur MP, laxminarayan Pandey, by a margin of 30,819 votes, in 2009.
This time she is in a contest against the BJP first-timer, Sudhir Gupta (54) who is Mandsaur district BJP president. The Mandsaur seat has become most important for the Congress because Meenakshi was selected through the 'primary' system, though experts estimate that the seat would also be impacted by the 'Modi wave'.
It may be recalled that at an All India Congress Committee meeting in January, Rahul Gandhi had said that 15 lok Sabha candidates would be decided by the party through the 'primary' system.
The exit polls are predicting just three seats for the Congress in the State putting to acid test party vice-president Rahul Gandhi's ambitious nationwide experiment that was started in January called 'primaries.' Now, it would be interesting to watch that whether the Modi wave makes its impact or the Gandhi experiments works in the state.