Brand Modi battles Cong's Nyay in Madhya Pradesh

Bhopal: It is BJP’s ‘brand Modi’ vs Congress’ “Nyay” in all the eight parliamentary constituencies in Madhya Pradesh, going to polls in the final phase of Lok Sabhd elections on Sunday.

All the eight LS seats fall under prosperous Malwa-Nimar belt of MP, a traditional saffron bastion, dented by Congress in the 2018 assembly elections after decades.

While BJP appeared to be banking on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity to regain its lost ground in the belt in the May 19 polls, Congress hoped that its “Nyay” scheme, the brainchild of AICC president Rahul Gandhi, would see the party through in these seats.

“Nyay has caught imagination of people particularly in rural MP”, Congress spokesman Pankaj Chaturvedy told this newspaper on Saturday.

BJP had held all the eight LS seats in the 2014 polls. BJP however claimed that there was groundswell of support for Mr Modi across MP which would help the party retain its bastion in Malwa-Nimar region in the Sunday’s LS elections.

“There is an undercurrent in favour of Mr Modi in each constituency. The brand Modi of BJP has taken steam out of the key poll plank of Nyay of Congress”, a BJP spokesman here said.

In fact, candidates of traditional poll rivals, Congress and BJP, in each constituency have been relegated to background with the die in each seat cast for a showdown between Modi and Nyay.

The region witnessed high-voltage campaigning by both BJP and Congress. BJP has fielded new faces in six out of these eight seats in the poll.

In 2018 assembly elections, Congress won 35 out of total 66 seats in the belt, helping the party return to power in the state after a gap of 15 years. BJP which had won 58 out of 66 seats in the region had to contend with 28 seats in the last year’s assembly polls.

Two former Union ministers, Kantilal Bhuria and Arun Yadav, both of Congress, are trying their lucks in their respective constituencies of Ratlam and Khandwa in this election.