Surat Redux For Congress In Indore?
The Congress in Madhya Pradesh received a setback today with its Indore candidate, Akshay Kanti Bam, withdrawing his nomination. State cabinet minister and BJP leader Kailash Vijayvargiya said he had joined the BJP. The BJP called it a failure of Congress leadership, a rejection of its politics by its own leaders. Congress claims the BJP had been applying pressure by reviving a previous criminal case. Earlier this month, in Gujarat's Surat, the Congress candidate had suspended its nominee, Nilesh Kumbhani, whose nomination form was rejected by the Election Commission over discrepancies, leading to BJP's Mukesh Dalal winning the Lok Sabha seat unopposed. Is this elimination of contest a show of strength and supremacy, a momentum building exercise, politics of consensus or an electoral malady that needs to be called out?
