MP polls | Kamal Nath: Have informed Congress leaders about who will get tickets

The Congress has already picked its candidates for the upcoming Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections and has informed them about their nomination, state party president Kamal Nath said on Sunday (October 1).

Notably, the Opposition party has not yet officially declared its candidates for the polls, due in November this year.

“We have informed those to whom we will be giving tickets,” Nath told reporters.

Taking a swipe at Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Nath said the CM has made so many announcements that he has lost track of them.

"Chouhan has doubled the speed of his announcements as he realised that the prospects of his party are not good," Nath alleged.

Queried on Chouhan's latest assurance that one person per household will get the job if BJP is elected again, Nath said, "Chouhan is making a last-ditch effort to mislead the people but he should understand that people of Madhya Pradesh understand this (politics)".

The ruling BJP has so far declared 79 candidates, including three Union ministers and four other Lok Sabha members, out of 230 for the upcoming Madhya Pradesh polls.

Earlier on Sunday morning, Nath claimed state officials and in-charges of BJP don't know whose name will appear in the election list.

“No matter how many meetings are held to show all the committees of BJP, they are not in a position to make decisions. Those who did not get tickets or any post were angry and unhappy, but now those who are getting tickets are becoming angry and unhappy,” Nath said on X.

The Congress veteran was apparently taking a dig at BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya who had said that he was finding it hard to believe that the party gave him a ticket.

Vijayvargiya is fielded from the Indore-1 constituency.

After the 2018 elections threw up a hung assembly, the Congress, which won 114 seats in the 230-member House by restricting the BJP to 109, formed a coalition government under Nath.

However, the Nath-led dispensation collapsed after 15 months in March 2020 when several Congress MLAs, most of them the loyalists of Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, joined the BJP, providing the muscle to the saffron party under Chouhan to seize power.