Congress Names Patel for Budhni, Malhotra to Contest Vijaypur
The announcement comes a day after BJP declared candidates for the bypolls
Bhopal
The Congress party on Sunday evening announced names of its candidates for the November 13 bypolls for the Budhni and Vijaypur assembly segments in Madhya Pradesh.
Rajkumar Patel will be the party nominee in Budhni, while Mukesh Malhotra has been chosen to contest the Vijaypur bypoll.
The two bypolls are being widely regarded as a litmus test for Congress state unit chief Jitu Patwari, who was nominated to lead the party soon after the Vidhan Sabha elections of 2023.
The election in Budhni was necessitated by former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s resignation from the Vidhan Sabha.
The Vijaypur constituency is witnessing its second assembly election in less than a year, as sitting Congress MLA Ramvilas Rawat resigned from the state assembly after moving to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) earlier this year.
Rawat—the BJP candidate from Vijaypur—has since been inducted into the state cabinet and holds the portfolio for forests.
Patwari has said that the Congress will avenge the humiliation meted out by Rawat in the bypolls.
Rhetoric aside, the BJP has an edge in the two segments, and it would be a credit to Patwari’s sustained efforts if the grand old party manages to pull off a surprise win in even
