The Lok Sabha 2024 election results have thrown a quite a few surprises and the INDIA bloc alliance defied most exit poll predictions to bag over 230 seats, as of 6 pm on January 4. However, in the Hindi heartland of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, BJP has steamrolled the Opposition, with an almost clean sweep.
Madhya Pradesh elects 29 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats. It saw an overall voter turnout of 66.87% in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections with key constituencies like Bhopal, Indore, and Gwalior witnessing fierce contests. Interestingly, after Shankar Lalwani, who has secured 11,60,627 votes, Indore saw the maximum votes for NOTA – more than 2 lakh voters chose NOTA.
Akshya Kanti Bam, who was supposed to be the Congress leader from Indore, went to the Indore district collector’s office along with BJP minister Kailash Vijayvargiya and lawmaker Ramesh Mendola on April 29 and withdrew his nomination. After this last-minute withdrawal, Congress had appealed to their voters to opt for NOTA.
Meanwhile, Chhindwara, a Congress bastion for many decades, seems to be going to BJP. Nakul Nath, son of veteran leader Kamal Nath, who won his first election in 2019, is trailing BJP’s Bunty Sahu. Jyotiraditya M. Scindia from the BJP has won the Guna Seat by margin of 5,40,929 while former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has secured a comfortable win in Vidisha.
In Chhattisgarh, the BJP has maintained an impressive lead in 10 out of 11 Lok Sabha seats, as per trends available so far. The Congress has managed a lead only in the Korba seat where its sitting MP Jyotsna Mahant, wife of the incumbent leader of opposition Charandas Mahant, was leading. In the high-profile Rajnandgaon seat, Congress leader and former chief minister Bhupesh Baghel, who was initially leading, was trailing by a margin of 33,512 votes against the BJP’s sitting MP Santosh Pandey.
(With Agency inputs)