Cong sets up panel to pick nominees for Budhni bypoll

Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh Congress has formed a three-member panel of senior leaders to find potential candidates for the upcoming bypoll in Budhni — the political stronghold of BJP’s stalwart and former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

The panel consisting of three senior party leaders — Sajjan Singh Verma (former Minister), Arun Yadav (former Union Minister), and Shailendra Patel (former MLA) have been tasked to identify the potential candidates.

The bypoll in Budhni, which is yet to be announced, was necessitated after Shivraj Singh Chouhan resigned from the Assembly after winning from Vidisha Lok Sabha constituency in the 2024 general elections.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who led the BJP government in the state for more than 17 years, is now the Union Agriculture Minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Cabinet.

Madhya Pradesh Congress General Secretary (Organisation), Rajeev Singh, told IANS that the committee will visit the Budhni Assembly constituency between October 14 and 15 and meet party workers, including block and booths.

“The committee will discuss with local leaders and workers to suggest names of potential candidates for the upcoming bypoll in Budhni Assembly seat. They will submit the report to Madhya Pradesh Congress Chief Jitu Patwari, which will be further sent to the All India Congress Committee,” Singh said.

Sources said that Jitu Patwari took this decision to forward the names of possible candidates has also begun in the Congress.

Sources added that an internal rift over picking a candidate has started taking shape among the local party workers.

There are two major segments in this particular seat — Budhni block, which has 90 booths, while the rest 273 booths fall under Nasrullaganj block.

During a meeting with state leadership, Congress workers from Nasrullaganj block have said that despite being the smaller part, candidates are often picked from Budhni.

In the Assembly election held in November last year, Congress candidate Vikram Mastal Sharma received a total of 59,977 (25.71 per cent) votes as compared to BJP’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan getting 1,64,951 votes (70.70 per cent).

Interestingly, Sharma, who had lost in his own booth (under the Budhni block), got the rest of the votes (more than 50,000) from Nasrullaganj block.

Last month, Jitu Patwari had deployed a 15-member team comprising of senior leaders and former Ministers in the next two weeks.