The general elections in India will be held in seven phases starting on April 19 and concluding on June 1. Madhya Pradesh, which sends 29 MPs to the Lok Sabha, will go to polls in four phases. The counting of votes takes place on June 4.
Of the 29 seats in the state, 10 are reserved for the SC and ST candidates, while the rest are unreserved.
Polling across six Lok Sabha seats will be held on April 19, followed by seven constituencies on April 26, and eight each on May 7 and May 13, respectively.
During the 2019 general elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured 28 of the 29 seats, restricting the Congress to just one seat. While the BJP managed a 58% vote share last time, the Congress could only manage 34.5% votes.
After a resounding victory in the 2023 Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections -- taking 163 of the 230 seats in the Legislative Assembly -- the BJP leaders have expressed hope for a clean sweep in the state in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, while the Congress with the help of the INDIA bloc is looking forward to potential comeback in the state.
Here's a look at some of the key Lok Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh:
A bastion of the Scindia family, the seat witnessed the Congress suffer a huge upset in 2019 when Jyotiraditya Scindia lost to BJP's KP Singh Yadav by over 1.2 lakh votes. Later in 2020, Scindia, along with other Congress leaders, joined the BJP. Earlier, this seat was represented six times by his grandmother Vijaya Raje Scindia and four times by his father Madhavrao Scindia.
Jyotiraditya Scindia, currently the Union Minister of Civil Aviation, is BJP's candidate for the Guna seat in 2024. The Congress is yet to announce its candidate against Scindia.
A stronghold of the Congress, this seat in the Mahakoshal region has been represented in Parliament nine times by former Chief Minister Kamal Nath. Meanwhile, his wife Alka Nath won from here in 1996, while their son Nakul Nath bagged it in 2019. This time, the BJP has fielded Vivek Sahu from this seat against Nakul Nath.
Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is returning to national politics after around two decades. Chouhan will be contesting his sixth parliamentary election from the Vidisha seat, which was earlier held by BJP stalwarts Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1991) and Sushma Swaraj (2009 and 2014).
In 2019, BJP's Ramakant Bhargava defeated Congress' Shailendra Patel by over 5 lakh votes from this seat.
The BJP has been winning this seat since 1989. Some of the prominent party leaders, Uma Bharti (1999) and former chief minister Kailash Joshi (2004 and 2009) have contested Lok Sabha polls from here. In 2019, BJP’s Pragya Singh Thakur defeated veteran Congress leader Digvijaya Singh by a margin of 3.65 lakh votes. However, the ruling party has this time replaced Thakur with Alok Sharma.
BJP's Faggan Singh Kulaste lost last year's Assembly elections that he contested as a Union Minister and sitting Lok Sabha member from the Mandla seat. The party has once again announced Kulaste as its candidate from Mandla. He will contest the polls against Congress' sitting MLA from Dindori Omkar Singh Markam.
(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)
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