Madhya Pradesh assembly elections: Congress releases first list of 144 candidates

NEW DELHI: The Congress party on Sunday released its first list of candidates for the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections. The party has officially named 144 candidates to contest in this crucial electoral battle.
The party has fielded former chief minister and PCC Chief, Kamal Nath, from his Chhindwara assembly constituency. Furthermore, Jaivardhan Singh, son of former chief minister Digvijaya Singh and a former minister in the last Kamal Nath government, has been selected to represent the party in the Raghogarh assembly seat.
It has given 69 seats to its sitting legislators.

Govind Singh, the leader of the opposition in the state assembly, has been nominated from the Lahar constituency in the Bhind district.
Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the BJP candidate from Budhni in Sehore district and the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, will face actor Vikram Mastal in the election, who played Lord Hanuman in a TV serial.
Bodh Singh Bhagat, a former BJP MP who recently switched parties, has been nominated from the Katangi in Balaghat.
From Indore-1 seat, the party is fielding the sitting MLA Sanjay Shukla, where the BJP has given ticket to its national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya.
The BJP has announced the names of its 136 candidates, including seven Lok Sabha members. Three Union ministers are among them: Faggan Singh Kulaste, Prahlad Singh Patel, and Narendra Singh Tomar.
In the 2018 polls, the Congress won 114 seats in the 230-member House. It formed a coalition government under Kamal Nath with the support of the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and independent MLAs.
However, the Nath administration ended after just 15 months when a group of Congress MLAs defected to the BJP, the majority of them being supporters of Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia.
The BJP returned to power in March 2020 with Shivraj Singh Chouhan becoming chief minister for the fourth term.
The Madhya Pradesh elections are slated for November 17, with the results scheduled for declaration on December 3.