Cong candidate’s exit from race in Indore is surprising: Sumitra Mahajan

Indore(Team Newsbuddy): Former Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan has expressed surprise at the Congress’ last-minute withdrawal of its Indore Lok Sabha candidate, calling it unjust and emphasizing that people have the right to select in a democratic system. In a severe loss for the Congress in Indore, its candidate Akshay Kanti Bam withdrew from the race on April 29, the deadline for withdrawal of nominations, and joined the BJP.
Mahajan stated, “I was astonished to learn about the withdrawal of the candidacy of the main opposition party’s (Congress) candidate in Indore… This should not have occurred. There was no need for this development because it was written on the wall that nobody could beat the BJP in Indore.” 
Madhya Pradesh’s commercial center has been a BJP stronghold. Mahajan had represented the constituency eight times since 1989.
She stated, “The Congress candidate (Bam) should not have done this during the elections.” He also betrayed his party, Congress. But why should I use these words?” Mahajan stated that she was unaware of the conditions that had led to such an incident.
The 81-year-old BJP leader, known as ‘Tai’, stated, “I’m not sure what happened. If all of this was done by our people, it is incorrect. There was no reason to do it. If the Congress candidate did it on his own, I will inform him that he should not have done so.”  She said candidates should contest polls if they have filed nominations.
“Democracy is all about going to the people and obtaining their decision about what they want. That’s why elections are held,” she said.

Mahajan said that after the first electoral change of its kind in the history of the Indore Lok Sabha seat, some educated people from the city called her up to say that they would press the NOTA (none of the above) option as “they did not like what BJP did”. “I explained to them that BJP has done nothing in this regard and that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the party is sticking to its core ideology and our candidate (Shankar Lalwani) is in the fray, so they should vote for BJP instead of NOTA,” Mahajan said.

In 2019, BJP’s Shankar Lalwani defeated his nearest rival of Congress, Pankaj Sanghvi, by 5.48 lakh votes.
BJP has renominated Lalwani from Indore, which has the largest number of eligible voters in the state at 25.13 lakh. The BJP has given a slogan of victory by a margin of 8 lakh votes here. Just a week before the Indore development, the BJP candidate in Gujarat’s Surat, Mukesh Dalal, was declared the winner after Congress nominee Nilesh Kumbhani’s nomination was rejected and other candidates dropped out of the contest.

Mahajan said she was not aware of what had happened in Surat as she was not present in the Gujarat city at that time.
On Congerss Rahul Gandhi contesting from Rae Bareli instead of Amethi, Mahajan said, “Is it not worth that Gandhi is working hard by touring the whole country? If he is changing his Lok Sabha seat, then let him change. That’s good.” Mahajan said Gandhi should look at the entire nation from the right perspective so that when he sat in the opposition, he had a good knowledge of the basic issues and could speak for the country.

On the questions raised by the opposition over her party’s election slogan of ‘Abki Baar, 400 Paar’, Mahajan said, “When a student studies diligently throughout the year and believes that he has to pass in the first division, then why should we find his statement strange. Aiming less is a crime.” Mahajan claimed that based on the country’s development, the abrogation of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir, and the enactment of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the BJP will adopt the slogan of winning over 400 Lok Sabha seats this time.