The absence of a BSP candidate (the elephant symbol party’s nominee had secured over 34,000 votes in the 2023 polls) too seems to have helped Malhotra’s cause by possibly consolidating the tribal, scheduled caste Jatav community votes and Muslim community votes, which collectively accounted for 38% of the total votes in the constituency.Importantly, the November 13 by-poll in Vijaypur, which saw 77 per cent polling, was marred by incidents of violence, particularly in the tribal, Jatav and Muslim-dominated villages of Sheopur district. The Congress’s state leadership, while accusing the BJP workers of stopping the tribal Dalits and Muslims from voting, had demanded a re-poll in 37 polling booths, but added that it would still win the by-poll in Vijaypur.BJP retains Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s pocket-borough, but a comparatively low marginBudhni seat of Sehore district (the home seat and bastion of ex-MP CM and present union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan) saw Chouhan’s loyalist BJP nominee Ramakant Bhargava defeat the 1993 Congress winner Rajkumar Patel (considered ex-CM Digvijaya Singh’s loyalist) by 13,901 votes.But the victory margin for Bhargava was more than nine times lower than Chouhan’s 2023 assembly polls margin of 1.04 lakh-plus votes from the seat.The comparatively lower winning margin for Bhargava, particularly assumed significance, as Chouhan, had himself aggressively campaigned for his loyalist in Budhni many days.
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