BJP will win more than 200 seats in MP Assembly polls, says Nadda

Bhopal: Bharatiya Janata Party president JP Nadda on Sunday said his party would win more than 200 out of 230 Assembly seats in Madhya Pradesh, where elections are set to be held at the end of this year.

Nadda later performed a ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of a new BJP office in the state capital.

”The warm welcome accorded to me by the spirited BJP cadre shows we are going to win more than 200 Assembly seats in MP,” he said.

A 10-storey modern office complex will come up in the Arera Colony area located near the Kamalapati railway station in place of an old building which was demolished by the BJP earlier.

A group of priests performed ‘bhoomipujan’ rituals in which Nadda, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and state BJP president VD Sharma took part along with other leaders of the saffron party.

Union ministers Narendra Singh Tomar, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Virendra Kumar and Prahlad Patel, members of the state cabinet, and BJP’s national general secretary Kailash Vijaywargiya were also present on the occasion.

”The estimated cost of the 10-storey building will be calculated after finalizing the DPR (detailed project report), a BJP leader said.

The old state BJP office, which was razed for the new one, was constructed in 1991 when the saffron party government under the late Sundarlal Patwa was in power, sources said.

The BJP formed a government in Madhya Pradesh again in 2003 and remained in power for 15 years till 2018 when it lost to Congress by a narrow margin.

The 2018 elections in MP threw up a hung Assembly, with the Congress emerging as the single largest party by bagging 114 seats in the 230-member House, while the BJP emerged victorious on 109 seats.

However, the BJP got 41.02 per cent votes against the Congress’ 40.89 per cent.

Subsequently, the Congress formed a coalition government under Kamal Nath but it collapsed in March 2020 when 25 MLAs loyal to Jyotiraditya Scindia revolted, paving the way for the return of Shivraj Singh Chouhan as chief minister.

The state witnessed bypolls on 28 Assembly seats in 2020 after 25 MLAs of Congress resigned in support of Scindia, who rebelled against the grand-old party to join the BJP. Three seats were already lying vacant in the Assembly at that time due to various reasons.

Of these 28 bypolls, the BJP won 19 seats, including 15 held by supporters of Scindia, while Congress won nine.

Currently, the BJP has 127 members in the MP Assembly, Congress 96, Bahujan Samaj Party 2, Samajwadi Party 1 and Independents 4.