Bhopal: The BJP will not get a walkover in Madhya Pradesh’s Khajuraho Lok Sabha seat as the Congress and Samajwadi Party have decided to support the All India Forward Bloc’s (AIFB) candidate R.B. Prajapati in the elections.
Prajapati, a retired IAS officer, will take on the state BJP chief Vishnu Dutt Sharma, who is contesting his second Lok Sabha election from the Khajuraho seat.
He had earlier contested the Assembly elections from Shivpuri and Tikamgarh as an independent candidate.
The decision to extend support to AIFB’s Prajapati came a week after the nomination of SP candidate Meera Yadav was cancelled due to “incomplete form”.
Khajuraho was the only constituency in Madhya Pradesh from where the SP, a member of the INDIA bloc, had decided to contest as part of a seat-sharing pact with the Congress, which is contesting the remaining 28 seats in the state.
In a press conference on Monday, MP Congress media department President Mukesh Nayak said: “We are supporting the AIFB candidate as the party is a member of the INDIA bloc. A proposal for a joint meeting of (SP leader) Akhilesh Yadav and (Congress leader) Rahul Gandhi in Khajuraho has been sent and soon the schedule will be announced.”
AIFB state President Jang Bahadur Singh Gill and SP state President Manoj Yadav also attended the press conference.
Khajuraho will go to poll in the second phase on April 26 with six other parliamentary seats in the state. Lok Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh are scheduled to be held in the first four phases of the seven-phase elections – on April 19, April 26, May 7, and May 13.
–IANS