Days after the Surat setback, Congress candidate from Madhya Pradesh's Indore Lok Sabha seat Akshay Kanti Bam withdrew his candidature and was "welcomed" by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to its fold on Monday. The Congress had fielded Bam against sitting BJP MP Shankar Lalwani from the Indore Lok Sabha seat, where polling will be held on May 13.
Madhya Pradesh Minister and BJP leader Kailash Vijayvargiya took to X and welcomed the Congress Lok Sabha candidate to BJP. Follow Elections 2024 News LIVE Updates
This development comes amid row over the Surat Lok Sabha seat, where the BJP candidate won unopposed as all other candidates withdrew from the fray.
BJP's Mukesh Dalal was on April 22 elected unopposed from Gujarat's Surat. The candidature of the Congress' Nilesh Kumbhani was rejected a day earlier after the district returning officer prima facie found discrepancies in the signature of the proposers.
Voting for all 26 constituencies in Gujarat is scheduled for May 7, but with the result of Surat seat already out, polling will be held on 25 seats.
The Gujarat Congress on April 26 suspended Nilesh Kumbhani from the party for six years. After Kumbhani's paper was rejected by the District collector and returning officer on April 21, he apparently had “disappeared” prompting the local party workers to hold protests outside his locked house in the city.
However, as soon as the news of his suspension came to fore, Kumbhani appeared before the media and blamed the local party leaders of the party for the rejection of his papers.
The victory of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Gujarat's Surat seat in the Lok Sabha elections 2024 triggered a war of words between the Congress and the saffron party and a social media debate over NOTA (None Of The Above Option). Congress also complained to the poll body alleging that the election of the BJP candidate was done by exerting "wrong and undue influence" and demanding the poll process in the seat be restarted.
Congress claimed the BJP was frightened by the anger of MSME owners and the business community and attempted "match-fixing" even in the Surat Lok Sabha seat which the ruling party has been winning since 1984.
Other opposition leaders also reacted to the Surat Lok Sabha win of BJP, with some saying people's right to elect their leader was taken away "even if NOTA '[None Of The Above]" would have been their choice.
