Samajwadi Party's Meera Deepak to contest against Madhya Pradesh BJP chief VD Sharma

Samajwadi Party replaced its candidate for the Khajuraho Lok Sabha constituency. The party has fielded Meera Deepak in place of Manoj Yadav. Meera Deepak will face Madhya Pradesh BJP president and sitting MP V D Sharma.

Samajwadi Party replaced its candidate for the Khajuraho Lok Sabha constituency. The party has fielded Meera Deepak in place of Manoj Yadav. Meera Deepak will face Madhya Pradesh BJP president and sitting MP V D Sharma. Samajwadi Party has made Manoj Yadav as state party president.

Earlier, Manoj Yadav was declared the candidate of the Samajwadi Party for the Khajuraho Lok Sabha constituency in Madhya Pradesh. Notably, Khajuraho is Madhya Pradesh's only constituency assigned to SP, a member of the INDIA bloc, as part of a seat-sharing deal with Congress.

Notably, in 2014, Manoj Yadav ran for Lok Sabha in Vidisha on an SP ticket and received only 3,293 votes. For the second consecutive election, the BJP has fielded its state party president, Vishnu Dutt Sharma, a Lok Sabha member from Khajuraho.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has been winning the Khajuraho seat since 2004, with firebrand leader Uma Bharti getting elected for four terms between 1989 and 1998. In 1999, senior Congress leader Satyavrat Chaturvedi was elected from Khajuraho, while BJP's Ram Krishna Kusumaria won in 2004. It has remained a BJP bastion ever since. Out of the 29 seats in MP, the Congress has so far announced candidates on 25 seats except for Khandwa, Gwalior, and Morena out of 28 seats it is contesting.

The Lok Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh are scheduled to be held in the first four phases of the total seven phases, dated April 19, April 26, May 7, and May 13. The election will be held in Rajgarh in the third phase on May 7, along with seven other parliamentary seats in the state. Sidhi, Shahdol (ST), Jabalpur, Mandla (ST), Balaghat and Chhindwara seats will go to polls in the first phase of Lok Sabha elections starting April 19.

In 2019, the BJP had won 28 of 29 constituencies in Madhya Pradesh, with the exception of the Chhindwara Lok Sabha seat, which was retained by Congress. (ANI)

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