With just a day to go for the third round of polling of the Lok Sabha election, battle lines are drawn in Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior-Chambal region with caste equations and triangular fights spicing up the contests.
The region comprises the Morena, Bhind (Scheduled Caste) and Gwalior seats, and parts of the Guna Lok Sabha constituency. The Other Backward Classes (OBCs) form the largest chunk of the electorate here, followed by the Scheduled Castes (SCs).
However, in Morena, the Kshatriya community has been in a deciding position thanks to political rivals Tomars and Sikarwars.
The BJP currently holds all three seats, but the Congress draws its hopes from its performance in the Assembly election held just six months ago.
In Gwalior and Bhind, the Congress won four out of eight Assembly segments each, while in Morena, it won five out of eight.
According to party insiders, the three seats were part of an 11-seat list sent to the party high command ahead of polls. The State unit, based on the evaluation of Assembly poll results, had requested “special attention” to the seats in candidate selection and campaigning.
The Congress has also put extra focus in the region, with party leader Rahul Gandhi having spent four out of six days of his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in this region in early March. Mr. Gandhi had entered the State with a public rally in Morena. Along with promises of social justice through a caste census and socio-economic survey, he also hit out at the Centre’s Agnipath Scheme, in attempts to draw the youth of the region that sees a significant number of aspirants to armed forces. He also held a rally in Bhind last week.
Apart from him, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra both have held rallies in Morena. At her rally on May 2, Ms. Gandhi Vadra had attacked Mr. Modi, responding to his allegations against her father and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi scrapping the inheritance tax to “avoid paying tax on the wealth he inherited from his mother”. “My father did not get money and wealth but shahadat ki bhavna [feeling of martyrdom] as inheritance,” she had said.
Meanwhile, the Bahujan Samaj Party, which has had a significant presence in parts of the Gwalior-Chambal belt, has made the contests triangular in Bhind and Morena.
The Morena constituency has been with the BJP since 1991 and is a stronghold of Assembly Speaker and former Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, who won the Lok Sabha poll from here in 2019 and is currently an MLA from Dimani seat of the Lok Sabha segment. The BJP this time has fielded his loyalist and former MLA Shivmangal Singh Tomar.
The Congress has fielded former BJP MLA Satyapal Singh Sikarwar alias ‘Neetu’, whose father Gajraj Singh Sikarwar was a two-term BJP MLA, while the BSP has given the ticket to industrialist Ramesh Garg.
Nitin Singhal, a local businessman, says, “The election is between Modiji and Neetu bhaiya. Nobody knows the BJP candidate well. It’s a direct contest between the two families and the Tomars and Sikarwars for dominance in the region.”
Mr. Singhal also says that while Prime Minister Narendra Modi is popular in the constituency, caste has always defied other factors.
The BSP here has entrusted an industrialist, Ramesh Garg, who has been with both the BJP and Congress in the past. While Mr. Garg is hoping to cash in on the BSP’s traditional vote bank — Vaishya community that is in significant numbers in urban pockets.
The BJP, meanwhile, has bolstered its army in Morena with some recent defections such as six-term senior Congress MLA Ramniwas Rawat and former BSP MLA Balveer Dandotiya joining the ruling party. Both the leaders have unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha poll from here in the past against the BJP. In 2019, Mr. Rawat had lost to Mr. Narendra Singh Tomar but had garnered over 4 lakh votes.
The Gwalior seat, barring 2019, has seen close finishes in the last four elections with margin ranging between 25-37,000. The Congress had last won the seat in 2004 but lost to the BJP in 2007 by-elections.
Denying a ticket to its sitting MP Vivek Shejwalkar, the BJP has fielded former MLA Bharat Singh Kushwaha to take on the Congress candidate and former MLA Praveen Pathak. Both had lost in the 2023 Assembly election by close margins.
The constituency has long seen the dominance of the Scindia royal family that has often defied the caste equations here. However this time, Union Minister and scion of the family Jyotiraditya Scindia has largely focused on his own seat — Guna.
In Bhind, the contest is between the BJP’s sitting MP Sandhya Rai and Congress MLA Phool Singh Baraiya. The Congress last won the seat in 1984 but is hopeful of various factors, including Mr. Baraiya’s hold on Dalits in the region and an anti-incumbency sentiment against Ms. Rai working in its favour this time.
