LS polls: David vs Goliath battle in Indore as Congress pins hope on rookie against BJP stalwart

PTI, Mar 24, 2024, 6:04 PM IST

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Indore: The Congress has fielded Akshay Bam, a newbie in the poll arena from Indore Lok Sabha constituency, an unbreached BJP citadel for 35 years, against sitting MP Shankar Lalwani, who had won the 2019 contest by a huge margin of over 5.47 lakh votes.

Bam (45), a businessman from the Jain community, has to shoulder a big responsibility of keeping the Congress cadre motivated in view of three former MLAs and several workers of the party joining the ruling BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. Prominent among Congress defectors are Pankaj Sanghvi, Sanjay Shukla, and Vishal Patel.

He faces sitting BJP MP Shankar Lalwani, 62, who had won the last contest against his Congress challenger Pankaj Sanghvi by possibly the highest vote margin in Madhya Pradesh. Indore is the commercial capital of Madhya Pradesh and is the cleanest city in India. The BJP holds all the eight assembly constituencies under the Indore Lok Sabha seat.

The BJP has set a target to win the Indore constituency, the largest one in terms of the number of voters at 25.13 lakh in Madhya Pradesh, by a margin of 8 lakh votes. Notably, Bam has not contested any election from Congress. He was denied a ticket by Congress from Indore assembly constituency 4 last year, triggering protests from his supporters.

The BJP has been winning the Indore Lok Sabha constituency since 1989 when Sumitra Mahajan defeated former MP chief minister and ex-Union Minister Prakash Chand Sethi.

Mahajan, a former Lok Sabha Speaker, won this seat multiple times until she was replaced in 2019 by Lalwani, a member of the Sindhi community which has 1.25 lakh voters.

Bam, a businessman whose family runs private colleges in Indore, expressed confidence in victory in view of the ”altered ground situation”. The number of voters of the Jain community Bam belongs to is around 2 lakh in the Indore constituency.

”The situation is completely different on the ground this time as people are badly hit by unemployment and inflation. We will demolish the BJP’s stronghold in Indore,” Bam told PTI after his candidature was declared by Congress.

He said the Congress campaign’s focus would be women and unemployment.

”The ruling BJP has not kept its promise of legalising the illegal colonies of Indore due to which the people are very upset,” he claimed. According to Bam, micro, small and medium enterprises in the commercial capital of Madhya Pradesh lack infrastructure.

”Indore city also lacks proper air and railway services,” he said. The BJP appears confident of another comfortable win from Indore. In the 2019 general elections, the BJP won 28 out of 29 Lok Sabha constituencies in Madhya Pradesh, with Chhindwara being the sole seat the Congress managed to save.

”Fielding a novice like Bam shows that Congress has run out of leaders in Indore. It seems Bam was picked out of compulsion by Congress,” MP BJP co-media in-charge Deepak Jain said.

Jain said MP Congress chief Jitu Patwari, who hails from Indore, should have contested from Indore instead of fielding a novice like Bam. Indore will vote on May 13.