Madhya Pradesh elections: BJP fields Atal Bihari Vajpayee's nephew, drops five MLAs in second list

BHOPAL: The BJP on Monday declared its second list of 17 candidates for the November 28 assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, fielding Lok Sabha member Anoop Mishra, who is nephew of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and dropping five sitting MLAs. The party has renominated eight other MLAs including Minister of State for Health Sharad Jain, who will contest from Jabalpur North seat. There are also two women candidates in the list. With this, the ruling party has so far announced 194 candidates in the state, which has a total of 230 assembly seats. The first list was released last Friday. The second list was released in New Delhi by Union Minister J P Nadda, who is also secretary of the BJP's Central Election Committee. Mishra, the Lok Sabha MP from Morena, will contest from Bhitarwar in Gwalior district. He had unsuccessfully fought the 2013 assembly polls from the same constituency. In 2014, he won from the Morena Lok Sabha seat. The BJP has fielded Nirmala Bhuriya, daughter of former MP and tribal leader Dilip Singh Bhuriya, from Petlawad (ST) in Jhabua district. In 2015, she had lost the bypoll from Jhabua-Ratlam Lok Sabha constituency, which fell vacant following the death of her father. Another woman in the list, Leena Jain, has been nominated from Basoda in Vidisha district. MLAs P S Dhurve (Bichhia in Mandla district), Chandrashekhar Deshmukh (Multai in Betul district), Veersingh Pawar (Kurwai in Vidisha district), Jaswant Singh Hada (Sujalpur in Shajapur district) and Mukesh Pandya (Badnagar in Ujjain) were denied tickets. Apart from Sharad Jain and Nirmala Bhuriya, six other MLAs who were renominated by the party include Pushendra Pathak from Bijawar in Chhatarpur district, Ramlal Routel from Annupur, Rampyare Kulaste from Niwas in Mandla, Narayan Panwar from Biaora in Rajgarh, Mohan Yadav from Ujjain South and Indersingh Parmar. Parmar, the sitting MLA from Kalapipal seat in Shajapur district, will contest from Shujalpur constituency this time.