Nominee choice is key to election win in MP
By Sudhir K. Singh
BHOPAL
Sept. 5: As the state polls draw near, what is becoming increasingly clear to both the ruling BJP and the Congress leadership is that the choice of candidates will substantially determine who comes to power. While the BJP may have got off to an early start in the stumping, thanks to chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s ongoing Jan Ashirwaad Yatra, failure to drop at least 70-80 non-performing MLAs could cost the saffronists the election. Going by current prognostications, the winner is not expected to get a simple majority of more than 5-10 in a House of 230. Quite obviously, the BJP stands to lose much more in view of its brute two-third’s majority.
Sources in the both parties admit that gone are the days when the symbol or the influence of locally powerful satraps was enough to guarantee victory. The rebellious streak in both outfits has taken a sharp uptick over the years. Nomination of undeserving candidates arouses the ire of both voters and party workers who have no qualms in ensuring their defeat. Not many care a whit about the damage caused to the party. A classic example of public ire was when five BJP legislators whose seats fell within the Khargone LS segment were driven out of their constituencies during the campaigning for the bypoll last year. It was largely due to their incompetence and arrogance that the Congress went on to wrest the seat from the BJP.
Predictably enough, fixing the criteria for candidate selection is posing to be a severe headache for the state Congress. This was clear from the deliberations of the party’s election committee on Friday in which all the biggies (viz. Kamal Nath, Suresh Pachouri, Digvijay Singh, and Jyotiraditya Scindia) were present. AICC observer Narayan Samy took pains to clarify that a candidate’s "winnability" would be the sole yardstick in the ticket distribution. Party insiders argued that this ought to have been the criteria in any case, but the old "jagirdari" system (ie. rule of regional overlords) ensured that it was seldom put in practice. MPCC chief Suresh Pachouri said there was a demand that 40 per cent of the nominations go to new faces. Also broached was an upper age limit of 65-70 as in Rajasthan, exclusion of those who had lost twice in succession, or who were humbled by more than 15,000 votes.
With hordes of ticket seekers thronging the MPCC office, Mr Pachouri informed that confabulations were still on, and that a clear policy had still to emerge.