2014 elections result: Modi wave in Madhya Pradesh's poppy land

INDORE: Modi wave seemed to have been doing wonders in the poppy land of Mandsaur with Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's close aide Meenakshi Natarajan trailing to BJP's Sudhir Gupta in the first round of counting by about 30,000 votes.
Natarajan, who was one among the few candidates in the Congress to have received a ticket after primaries — the brainchild of the Congress vice-president to promote democratic process of electing candidates in Congress party.
On the other hand, Sudhir Gupta, the district president of BJP, was not a popular candidate and had to face stiff resistance from eight-time MP Laxminarayan Pandey of BJP for his candidature. Instead of giving it to a more reliable candidate, BJP seemed to have chosen to ride the Modi wave by preferring Gupta over Pandey to wrest the seat back from Congress.
Though Meenakshi ended the Congress’s drought for a seat in the poppy land in 2009, she undermined the Modi wave, which was palpable soon after BJP's outstanding performance in 2014 assembly elections.