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The Bharatiya Janata Party will have to battle anti-incumbency, overcome infighting, and face voters amid the fatigue against the state leadership of more than 16 years to fend off resurgent Congress in the upcoming Madhya Pradesh assembly polls. After winning three consecutive polls in 2003, 2008 and 2013, the BJP lost to the Congress in 2018 but managed to come back to power after the Kamal Nath-led government collapsed in March 2020. Here is a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the BJP in the central state, where the saffron party and the Congress are traditional rivals. STRENGTHS: * BJP is relying heavily on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's charisma and mass appeal of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, an OBC leader known for his down-to-earth image. *The ruling party is banking on its outreach to attract women voters and has launched dedicated schemes like 'Ladli Bahna Yojana'. Eligible women get Rs 1,250 per month under this scheme, and the ...
The BJP, which was in power in Chhattisgarh for 15 years under the leadership of Raman Singh, suffered a massive defeat at the hands of Congress in the 2018 assembly polls. Apart from strong anti-incumbency, charges of corruption, lack of coordination between party organisation and the government led by it, and OBCs voting in favour of the Congress were attributed as some of the prominent reasons for its defeat five years ago. In the 2018 elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fielded 14 candidates hailing from Sahu community, a numerically dominant Other Backward Classes (OBC) community, but 13 of them bit the dust. The BJP last year appointed party MP Arun Sao, who hails from Sahu community, as its state unit chief, and this move may work in its favour this time. There are 90 seats in the Chhattisgarh assembly. The BJP has declared candidates on 21 seats for the upcoming assembly polls and most of them are representatives of panchayat bodies, which shows the party is gearing