Lok Sabha polls: Direct contest between BJP and Congress in Madhya Pradesh's Jabalpur

For six seats, 88 candidates are in the fray, including former Chief Minister Kamal Nath's son Nakul Nath from Chhindwara and Union Minister Faggan Singh Kulaste from Mandla (ST).

Along with Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh's Sidhi, Shahdol, Chhindwara, Mandla, and Balaghat will go to polls in the first phase of polling tomorrow, April 19. For six seats, 88 candidates are in the fray, including former Chief Minister Kamal Nath's son Nakul Nath from Chhindwara and Union Minister Faggan Singh Kulaste from Mandla (ST). Jabalpur has the highest 19 candidates while Shadol has the lowest 10 candidates in the fray.

Nearly 1.12 crore electorates, including 57.02 lakh men, 55.66 lakh women, and 184 third-gender individuals, are eligible to exercise their franchise during the first phase. As many as 13,570 polling booths have been set up. Jabalpur consists of eight Legislative Assembly segments -- Patan, Bargi, Jabalpur Purba (SC), Jabalpur Uttar, Jabalpur Cantonment, Jabalpur Paschim, Panagar, and Sihora (ST).

The BJP has fielded Ashish Dubey while the Congress has named Dinesh Yadav from Jabalpur. Jabalpur was a Congress bastion since the first elections held in 1957. During the 1996 elections, the constituency favoured the Bharatiya Janata Party.

It has been a BJP bastion since then with the party not losing an election in 28 years, with Rakesh Singh an OBC leader has been winning the seat, consistently since 2004. He, however, vacated the seat after he became an MLA in the 2023 Assembly elections.

Jabalpur is a prominent constituency in the State's tribal-dominated Mahakoshal region. The BJP, that had won 28 out of 29 Lok Sabha seats of the state in 2019, lost only Mahakoshal region's Chhindwara seat which went to the Congress with former Chief Minister Kamal Nath's son Nakul Nath winning from there. The Mandla Lok Sabha seat also falls under the region where the BJP has again fielded Union Minister Faggan Singh Kulaste. Kulaste, however, had recently lost the Assembly polls from Niwas seat falling under his Lok Sabha segment.

For the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his campaigning with a huge roadshow in Jabalpur on April 7. (ANI)

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