Bhopal: After four days of brainstorming by the BJP core committee, the party on Tuesday announced 13 of 16 mayor candidates, but the deadlock in Gwalior,Indore and Ratlam persists. In Gwalior, the saffron camp is caught between Jyotiraditya Scindia and BJP veteran Narendra Singh Tomar, and in Indore, it cannot decide between the candidates backed by former Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, say sources.
In Gwalior, Union ministers Tomar and Scindia, state ministers Narottam Mishra and Arvind Bhadoria sat down for a meeting to settle on a single candidate. After the meeting, Tomar said, “In the Gwalior matter, we had a full discussion; I think the party will announce the candidate today. There is an exercise on to select the candidates for corporator. Only three mayoral candidates are left to be announced, which we think will be done by this evening.”
In Jabalpur, BJP has fielded Dr Jeetendra Jamar, a popular doctor who is seen close to chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. In Ujjain, party’s candidate is Mukesh Tatwal.Sagar will see an interesting contest between BJP’s active worker for 10 years Sangeeta Tiwari and Congress’ Nidhi Jain,daughter-in-law of BJP MLA Shailendra Jain.
BJP has given its Rewa mayoral ticket to two-time corporator and vice-president of BJP Kisan Morcha Pramod Vas. In OBC-reserved Satna, the candidate is state BJP vice-president Yogesh Tamrakar, attached to RSS for three decades.