Dhar: Digvijaya Singh loyalist and three-time party nominee Ashok Singh got a ticket from Gwalior seat as the Congress released three more names for Lok Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh.
The party, which released a list of 18 candidates on Saturday, continued to hold back the name of the candidate from the prestigious Indore seat.
Ending speculation about the candidature of former Union minister Jyotiraidtya Scindia’s wife Priyadarshini Raje from Gwalior, the party named hotelier-politician Ashok Singh who lost out on a ticket on three previous occasions.
The Congress was eager to nominate have Raje, a glamorous royal, as its candidate from the Scindia bastion but Jyotiraditya Scindia was reportedly averse to his wife taking a political plunge. While the party initially thought Jyotiraditya Scindia could be convinced to change his mind, it nominated Ashok Singh, an aide of Digvijaya Singh.
Ashok Singh had lost the 2014 general election to Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar by barely 29,000 votes.
The Congress has fielded Devashish Jararia, a former BSP cadre, from Bhind. He had joined the party last year as part of its strategy to woo Dalits ahead of the Assembly polls.
Jararia, often called the “Jignesh Mevani” of Madhya Pradesh, was instrumental in bringing Dalit youth to the BSP fold and propagating the party’s cause on social media.
From ST-reserved Dhar, the Congress appeared to have buckled under pressure from Jai Adivasi Yuva Shakti, a tribal outfit that backed Congress in the assembly polls. Dinesh Girwal, a former NSUI and Youth Congress functionary, has been given the ticket.
In the Assembly elections last year, the outfit’s national convener Hiralal Alawa had won from Manawar in Dhar on a Congress ticket. With the Jai Adivasi Yuva Shakti adamant that its candidate be fielded from Dhar, two-time MP Gajendra Singh Rajukhedi was denied a ticket.
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