Indore: Indian National Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Bhartiya Janata Party Chief Amit Shah, and State Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan launched their election campaign with a roadshow. Malwa-Nimar region is an important area and comprises of 66 assembly seats, which both the parties are well aware of it.

After the final candidature from both Congress and BJP, the scenario is clear. Majority of these faces are the same regular ones and it is an attempt to avoid any seat cut specially for the ruling BJP, who gave priority to their existing MLAs fearing that dissatisfied leaders may approach Congress for seats.

Issues like Anti-incumbency, Farmer’s plight, OBC –Upper caste reservation movement, which were considered of major importance by the people of the region appears to be sidelined and both the parties are busy in managing their leaders raising their voice within the party, which can be a potential spoiler.

There are 9 assembly constituencies which fall under the vicinity of Indore region.

The nine constituencies in Indore district include Indore 1 to 5, Rai, Mhow, Depalpur and Sanwer.

BJP senior leader and national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya son Akash is given ticket from Indore 3 in the third list of candidates. Congress has given the ticket to Ashwin Joshi from the same seat which is a strong bastion of BJP’s Vijayvargiya who has won the sets since 1990. Usha Thakur is given ticket from Mhow.

Congress candidate Antar Singh Darbar who lost against Kailash Vigavargiya is seeing this opportunity as a blessing in disguise. Ramesh Mandola who is given a ticket from Indore 2 has expressed his satisfaction and said that they will leave no stone unturned for Akash. Ashwin is trying to convince the voters by explaining to avoid the tax collection nexus of BJP and vote for Congress.

From Indore 1 seat, Congress has fielded Sanjay Shukla who will be facing their former rebel leaders Kamlesh Khandelwal who was at number 2 position in the last election and also Preety Agnihotri whose name was removed from the Congress list in the last moment. Both these leaders are fighting independently against the Congress candidate.

These two (Indore 1 &2) assembly seats have raised questions about the decisions of both the parties. Whether BJP could continue Usha Thakur from the previous seat and thought of fielding someone else from Mahow seat, and Congress could have given the opportunity to the last election second runner-up Kamlesh Khandelwal from Indore 1 and have created a tough contest.

It appears that Both Congress and BJP has given priority to win the election and the local issues are being sidelined.

Incumbent MLAs of Indore:

203 Depalpur- Manoj Nirbhaysingh Patel, 204 Indore -1 Sudarshan Gupta, 205-Indore -2 Ramesh Mendola, 206-Indore 3- Usha Thakur, 207-Indore -4 Malini Singh Gaur,

208-Indore -5 Mahendra Hardiya, 209-Mhow Kailash Vijayvergiya, 210-Rau- Jeetu Jeerati, 211-Sanwer Rajesh Sonkar