BSP releases first list of candidates for Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has released its first list of seven candidates for the upcoming assembly election in Madhya Pradesh, which is set to take place later this year. 

Of the seven seats for which the candidates have been named, four are currently held by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the remaining three by Congress.

The BSP's first list of candidates includes former party MLA Balveer Singh Dandotita from the Dimani in the Morena district. He won by over 2,000 votes in the 2013 Assembly elections. Pankaj Sharma has been named as the candidate from the Semaria seat in the Rewa district. Avdesh Pratap Singh Rathore and Ramraja Pathak will contest from the Niwari and Rajnagar-Chhatarpur seats, respectively.

The other three candidates are Devraj Ahirwar from the Raigon seat, Maniraj Singh Patel from the Rampur Baghelan seat and Vishnu Dev Pandey from the Sirmour seat.

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Maniraj Singh Patel is a retired Naib Tehsildar, and Vishnu Dev Pandey, the BSP candidate from the Simour seat, is a former Deputy Superintendent of Police.

The BSP, whose influence in Madhya Pradesh is confined to regions bordering Uttar Pradesh, including the Vindhya, Gwalior-Chambal and Bundelkhand, won seven seats in the 2008 assembly election with a 9 per cent vote share. 

Five years later, the tally had dropped to four seats with a 6.20 per cent vote share and further declined in the 2018 assembly elections to just two seats and a 5.01 per cent vote share.

Sanjeev Singh, one of the two BSP MLAs, defected to the BJP in July last year. The party now has only one MLA left in the state, Rambai Thalur, a first-time legislator from the Patharia seat in the Damoh district of Madhya Pradesh.

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