Hundreds of BJP workers in Bhopal protested the denial of a ticket to former MLA Rajendra Verma from Sonkatch on the same day that 39 BJP candidates attended a training session on electioneering at the party's headquarters.
The protests coincided with a training session on electioneering at the party's Bhopal headquarters attended by state BJP chief VD Sharma and Union Ministers Bhupendra Yadav, Ashwini Vaishnaw, and Narendra Singh Tomar.
The denial of a ticket to Mr Verma is not an isolated case. There is resentment among party workers and supporters of BJP leaders who have been denied tickets from other seats in the state, including Maharajpur, Chattarpur, Banda, Sumawali, Sabalgarh, Lanji, Pandhurna, and Saunsar.
BJP workers from Dewas district's Sonkatch-SC assembly constituency traveled to Bhopal in a convoy of 400-450 vehicles to protest the denial of a ticket to the former MLA at the state party headquarters. The workers, who ranged from booth-level workers to village sarpanchs and other local leaders, carried placards demanding that Mr Verma be re-nominated to the seat he won in 2013 but lost by less than 10,000 votes in 2018.
Sonkatch-SC has traditionally been a Congress stronghold. The party has won the seat four times since 1985, while the BJP has won three times. Former minister Sajjan Singh Verma, a loyalist of Kamal Nath, has won the seat four times for the Congress in the last 38 years, including in the 2018 election, when he defeated the incumbent BJP MLA Rajendra Verma by over 9,700 votes.
The BJP has replaced Rajendra Verma with Rajesh Sonkar, the party's district president of neighbouring Indore district, as its candidate for the Sonkatch-SC seat in Dewas district. Mr Sonkar is seen as a supporter of former Indore MP and former Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.
The BJP last week announced its list of 39 candidates for the upcoming assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and 21 candidates for Chhattisgarh. The polls are still months away from being officially announced by the Election Commission, but the BJP is clearly gearing up for a fight. Both states currently have non-BJP governments.
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