The BJP, SP and the INC have fielded former Chief Ministers from Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh. The BJP has fielded four such candidates, the INC three and the SP one. Here is how they’re faring.
When it comes to vote shares, Basavaraj Bommai and Bhupesh Baghel’s vote shares were close, differing by around three percentage points. On the other hand, Shivraj Singh Chouhan from Madhya Pradesh won over 70% of the votes. This was more than 50 percentage points higher than what the trailing Congress candidate won.
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Akhilesh Yadav, Uttar Pradesh
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is a familiar face in the Kannauj constituency. He has won from the seat in 2000 and represented it in 2004 and 2009. For a party representing socialist ideology, the seat is important because Socialist stalwart Ram Manohar Lohia won it in the 1967 Lok Sabha election representing the Samyukta Socialist Party.
Basavaraj Bommai, Karnataka
The Haveri seat was seen as a safe bet for the BJP since it has already won the seat in the last four elections since 2004. Before that, it was a Congress bastion. The Congress had won it for 13 times before the BJP took its place.
Bhupesh Baghel, Chhattisgarh
Rajnandgaon, like Kannauj, is also a BJP bastion. The party has won this seat from 2009. Moreover, Baghel has not had consistent luck during Lok Sabha elections. His previous two attempts ended in failure. He lost the Assembly election last year, too. However, the constituency has a dominant OBC community that the Congress hopes Baghel would consolidate, given that he is the OBC face in the State.
Charanjit Singh Channi, Punjab
Channi became the first Dalit Chief Minister for Punjab when the Congress announced it in 2021. He won Chamkaur Sahib assembly seat thrice since 2007. He faced criticism when he remarked that the Poonch terror attack was a BJP stunt to win elections in Jammu and Kashmir.
Digvijaya Singh, Madhya Pradesh
Digvijaya Singh won from Rajgarh for the first time in 1984 on a Congress ticket, and then once more in 1991. He lost the seat to BJP in 1989. After winning in 1991, he vacated the seat to take over as the Chief Minister. However, in this election, he trails behind the two-term sitting MP Rodmal Nagar.
H.D. Kumaraswamy, Karnataka
H.D. Kumaraswamy was selected as the candidate for Mandya by the BJP after the party asked the previous winner Sumalatha Ambareesh, an independent candidate supported by the BJP, to not aim for re-election. Though the electoral face-off was between H.D. Kumaraswamy and Venkataramane Gowda, it was also reckoned to be a fight for the Vokkaliga leadership in the agrarian district involving Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar of the Congress who is positioning himself as a prominent leader of the community.
Jagadish Shettar, Karnataka
Jagadish Shettar got his break when he won the assembly election in 1994 on a BJP ticket. However, he quit the BJP and went to the Congress last year and then re-joined it again this January. Being a Lingayat, Shettar had the ability to make a difference in parts of north Karnataka, where the community resides.
Manohar Lal Khattar, Haryana
Khattar began politics by joining the RSS in 1977 and then moving on to BJP. He is known for his organisational skills and powering election strategies for polls. He became Haryana’s first BJP Chief Minister in 2014.
Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Madhya Pradesh
Chouhan’s connection with the Vidisha seat spans five elections, with this one being the sixth. As an MP, he represented the seat five times till 2004 when he resigned to become Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister in 2005.
Published - June 04, 2024 07:29 pm IST
