August 27th 2023.
The Samajwadi Party (SP) has declared the names of two more candidates for the upcoming Madhya Pradesh (MP) assembly polls due this year-end, bringing the total number of candidates to six. When asked if the SP will contest the MP polls in alliance with the Congress as part of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) opposition bloc, SP state president Ramayan Singh Patel ruled out such a possibility.
"The decision about the alliance in any state is taken by the party's national leadership, but as of now we don't see any possibility of such an alliance in Madhya Pradesh for the upcoming assembly polls. However, our national president will take a decision in this regard," Patel told the Press Trust of India (PTI) on Sunday.
The INDIA alliance is composed of 26 political parties, including the Congress and the SP. While the BJP announced their first list of 39 candidates, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) declared seven nominees. Out of the 230-member MP assembly, the SP managed to secure one seat in the 2018 polls.
On August 23, the SP released a list of four candidates from Bundelkhand and Gwalior-Chambal belt seats, located near the Uttar Pradesh border. Furthermore, the party also released the names of Vishwanath Singh Gaud Markam from Dhauhani and Shravan Kumar Singh Gaud from Chitrangi, both from Vindhya region. As stated by Patel, the SP has declared candidates in six seats and have directed their state unit to contest elections in all seats.
When asked about the issues the SP intends to raise in the MP polls, Patel mentioned a few such as the caste-based census, unemployment allowance of more than Rs 3,000 per month for youth, government guarantee for business loans for youth, and loan waiver for farmers.
The 2018 assembly polls in MP saw the Congress win a maximum of 114 seats while the BJP won 109 seats. However, the Congress-led government collapsed after 15 months due to a section of Congress MLAs leaving and joining the BJP. This allowed the saffron party to return to power in March 2020 with Shivraj Singh Chouhan as Chief Minister.
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