Poll denouement only hours away
BHOPAL: The leaders of both the BJP and the Congress of the State are waiting a bated breath for the outcome of the Lok Sabha polls, which will be known by the afternoon on Friday. The BJP is taking the sharp rise in voting percentage on ten seats in the final round of elections as a welcome sign while the Congress candidates are analysing the upswing in their own way.
However, on all 29 seats, new faces appear to be in a more comfortable position than satraps. As far the BJP is concerned, its candidate Alok Sanjar in Bhopal, Janardan Mishra in Rewa, Bodh Singh Bhagat in Balaghat, Rodmal Nagar in Rajgarh, Chintamani Malviya in Ujjain, Sudhir Gupta in Mandsaur, Savitri Thakur in Dhar and Subhash Patel in Khargone are confident of their victory.
On the contrary, victory does not seem to be easy for BJP state president Narendra Singh Tomar (Gwalior), two-time MP Ganesh Singh (Satna), former minister Anup Mishra (Morena), Dilip Singh Bhuria (Ratlam) and Nandkumar Singh Chauhan (Khandwa). Even if these stalwarts manage to win, their margins of victory will be less than those of the new faces.
Similarly, the margins of victory of Union ministers Kamalnath and Jyotiraditya Scindia are likely to be lower this time. Winning has become a challenge for top Congress leaders including former leader of opposition Ajay Singh, state president Arun Yadav, former Union minister Kantilal Bhuria, Sajjan Singh Verma, Meenakshi Natrajan and Dr Govind Singh. A cake-walk is ruled out for Vivek Tankha, Alok Agarwal and Bhagirath Prasad.
Sources said, the BJP, on the basis of polling percentage, predicts that victory margin on seats of Bhopal, Rajgarh, Ujjain and Mandsaur would be higher than in Gwalior and Ratlam. BJP leaders too maintain that every seat has its own peculiar characteristic and it is possible that victory margin of a first timer may be more than top leaders but this does not affect the status of any leader.
