BJP releases 1st list of candidates for Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh assembly polls; Congress makes organisational changes

New Delhi [India], August 18 : Moving swiftly as part of its poll preparations, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday released its first list of candidates for two Hindi heartland states, even as Congress also made a significant change and appointed the party’s general secretary Randeep Surjewala in charge of poll-bound Madhya Pradesh. 
BJP has released its first list of 21 candidates in Chhattisgarh and 39 candidates in Madhya Pradesh, where it expects a tough contest in the assembly polls later this year. 
The list for the 90-member Chhattisgarh assembly includes names of five women candidates including Laxmi Rajwade, Shakuntala Singh Porthe, Sarla Kosaria, Alka Chandrakar, and Geeta Ghasi Sahu. 
The list also includes the name of Durg MP Vijay Baghel – a distant nephew of senior Congress leader and Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel. 
Vijay Baghel is to contest the poll from Patan seat against CM Baghel. The party had earlier named the Durg MP, who was in Congress till 2000, as in charge of its manifesto committee, heading a group of 30 leaders. 
Meanwhile, BJP has also declared the names of 39 candidates for the 230-seat Madhya Pradesh Assembly. The party has fielded its Indore district president Rajesh Sonkar to contest the election from Sonkachh seat in Dewas district. 
Former minister and Veteran Congress leader Sajjan Singh Verma is the sitting MLA from Sonkatch seat. In the 2013 state assembly polls, BJP leader Sonkar defeated Tulsi Ram Silawat (now Water Resource Minister) when Silawat was in Congress from the Sanwer seat in the Indore district. 
In the last 2018 assembly polls, Sonkar lost to Silawat (when he was still in Congress) from the same Sanwer seat. But later in 2020, Silawat quit the Congress party along with Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scidia and others and joined the BJP. After that Silawat contested the by-poll on BJP’s ticket from the Sanwer seat and won the election. 
Meanwhile, Congress has appointed its general secretary Randeep Surjewala in charge of poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, where BJP is in power. 
"Congress President has appointed general Mukul Wasnik as in-charge of Gujarat, and general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala as in-charge of Madhya Pradesh," the All India Congress Committee (AICC) said in a release on Thursday. 
Randeep Singh Surjewala is also the AICC in charge of Karnataka where the Congress registered an emphatic victory and ousted the BJP government in assembly polls held earlier this year. 
Notably, he was credited for maintaining a balance between Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Karnataka Unit President DK Shivakumar during elections in the state. 
Surjewala’s appointment as in-charge is seen as a significant change in the poll-bound Madhya Pradesh. 
In another change, Congress has also appointed former MLA Ajay Rai as the chief of its Uttar Pradesh unit, while the party’s general secretary Mukul Wasnik has been made the new in-charge of Gujarat.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel while reacting over the BJP lists and said that "there was nothing special about it."
"I came to know that they (BJP) have released the first list of 21 candidates (for the upcoming Chhattisgarh Assembly Elections), but there is nothing special about the list (kuch khas nahi hai)," CM Baghel said while speaking to reporters. 
The BJP had announced its list of candidates in Karnataka late compared to its rivals in the state. The party lost the polls in the southern state. 
With this, BJP has become the first national party to declare its candidates for both Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. 
The early declaration of the first list in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh is being seen as a move to give more time to candidates to campaign. 
In Chhattisgarh, 11 of the 21 seats for which candidates were declared are reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Scheduled Castes (SC), while the remaining 10 are for candidates of the general category. 
Similarly, in Madhya Pradesh, 21 of the 39 seats for which the party has announced its candidate are reserved for ST/SCs. 
The announcement came a day after discussions in the BJP's Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting regarding poll preparations for Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. 
According to sources, the committee discussed preparations in poll-bound Chhattisgarh and discussed some seats. The committee also discussed poll preparations in Madhya Pradesh and the impact of various welfare schemes of the party’s governments in the state and at the Centre. 
Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked state party leaders to focus on “weak seats” and continue dialogue with people through various programmes, sources said. 
Five states – Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Mizoram - will go to the polls by the end of this year.