Indore (Madhya Pradesh): With the announcement of Akshay Kanti Bam as its candidate, Congress has set the tone for the Indore Lok Sabha seat as BJP has already announced the incumbent Member of Parliament Shankar Lalwani as its candidate. Congress has tried to put a young face in the battle with the hope of penetrating the BJP’s bastion where the BJP has been invincible for the last 35 years.
BJP has been winning the seat since 1989 when Sumitra Mahajan defeated Prakash Chand Sethi and continued her winning journey till 2019 when the party replaced her with Shankar Lalwani. Congress had tried many of its big faces against her but no one could even decrease the winning margin significantly. In the last Lok Sabha election, Congress had fielded Pankaj Sanghvi against Shankar Lalwani and the latter had secured a win by more than 5.47 lakhs.
However, Sanghvi left the Congress and defected to BJP a couple of days ago and so had the other probable members of the party like Sanjay Shukla and Vishal Patel. Congress had denied assembly ticket from constituency 4 to Akshay and had put Raja Mandhwani at the last moment. Supporters of Akshay had staged protests against the party’s decision but to no avail.
Elections in 2019 In the 2019
Lok Sabha elections, BJP's Shankar Lalwani defeated Congress's Pankaj Sanghvi. Shankar Lalwani got 10,68,569 votes. Pankaj Sanghvi got 5,20,815 votes while BSP's Deepchand Ahirwar got 8,666 votes. According to the official data of the Election Commission, a total of 69.56 per cent voting was recorded in Indore parliamentary seat.
Candidates from Indore parliamentary seat in 2019 general elections were Pankaj Sanghvi (Congress), Shankar Lalwani (Bharatiya Janata Party), Engineer Deepchand Ahirwar (Bahujan Samaj Party), Iftikhar Ahmed Khan (Minority Democratic Party), Kamlesh Vaishnav (Hindustan Nirman Dal), Dheeraj Dubey journalist (SAPAKS Party), Bhavana Kishore Sangeliya (Janata Congress) and Rajendra Agarwal (Socialist Party). The independent candidates included Imran Baksh, Parmanand Tolani, Prakash Verma, Praveen Kumar Ajmera, Mahendra Tiklia, Haji Mushtaq Ansari, Ranjit Gohar, Ramesh Patil, Rajkaran Yadav, Shailendra Sharma, Surendra and Dr. Sandeep Vasantrao Kadve.
“I graduated from a college in Bombay and did my MBA and Law from Indore. I have been running three educational institutions in Indore and my family has been in social service that prompted me to join politics to serve the society.” Akshay Kanti Bam Congress candidate
