Madhya Pradesh Election 2023: Close Fight but Congress set to Score

The elections in Madhya Pradesh are over and all are waiting for the votes to be counted. The results will be out on December 3.

Newstrack/Election Chaska has already did a survey to find out what the public thinks. According to the survey, it looks like the Congress might be forming government in the state this time. But it's going to be a close call. The survey says that the Congress is likely to get 122 seats while BJP might get 94 seats. And there is very close fight for at least 14 seats.

Last time in 2018, the election results showed that BJP didn't really suffer from the anti-incumbency wave in the state. And let's not forget, Shivraj Chauhan's success in Madhya Pradesh was all thanks to Narendra Modi's campaign.

About Madhya Pradesh Elections

In the state elections of 2018 in November, following chart reflects the party wise seat distribution:

The hopes of Congress leaders in the state including Arun Yadav, Ajay Singh, Kamalnath the Chief Ministerial candidate of the Congress in Madhya Pradesh. The election results indicated that the BJP had not been hit by an anti-incumbency wave in Madhya Pradesh (MP). Besides Chouhan’s success in MP was attributed to the then BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s campaigning in the state.

State Legislative Assembly of Madhya Pradesh

This state was formed on 1 November 1956. This was done by merging the territories of the States of Madhya Bharat, Vindhya Pradesh, Bhopal, Mahakoshal and Madhya Pradesh (MP). The first Legislative Assembly was started from 1st November 1956 to 5th March 1957. After the reorganisation, the first elections were held in the year 1957. The Legislative Assembly of this state is also known as Madhya Pradesh Vidhan Sabha.

The electoral system of this state consists of the National level representation. Elections are held regularly for the purpose of forming the Government that can run the state. This state has a legislative assembly comprising 230 seats. The term of the Vidhan Sabha is five years, but will not be applicable if dissolved prior to that. The current speaker of this house is Girish Gautam, a BJP MLA. The elections were held in the State and the present House and the 12th Legislative Assembly were constituted on 5 December, 2013.

Madhya Pradesh Assembly Election Results:

2020 Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly by-elections

Region INC BJP Neck to neck fight seats

Bhopal 3 3 1

Raisen 2 2 0

Rajgarh 3 2 0

Sehore 2 2 0

Vidisha 3 2 0

Ashok Nagar 1 1 1

Shivpuri 3 2 0

Datia 2 1 0

Guna 2 2 0

Gwalior 4 2 0

Harda 1 1 0

Betul 3 2 0

Morena 4 2 0

Seopur 2 0 0

Bhind 3 2 0

Burhanpur 2 0 0

Dhar 4 2 1

Indore 4 3 2

Jhabua 2 1 0

Khandwa 2 2 0

Khargone 3 2 1

Alirajpur 1 1 0

Balaghat 4 2 0

Jabalpur 4 3 1

Katani 2 2 0

Mandala 2 1 0

Narsinghpur 2 2 0

Seoni 2 2 0

Rewa 3 5 0

Satna 3 3 1

Seedhi 2 1 1

Singrauli 1 1 1

Shahdol 2 1 0

Umariya 1 1 0

Dindori 1 1 0

Anuppur 1 1 1

Dewas 2 3 0

Mandsor 2 2 0

Neemuch 2 1 0

Ratlam 2 3 0

Shajapur 1 2 0

Ujjain 3 4 0

Agar Malwa 1 1 0

Sagar 4 4 0

Damoh 2 1 1

Panna 1 1 1

Chhatarpur 4 2 0

Timagarh 2 1 0

Niwari 1 0 1

Chhindwara 4 3 0

Narmadapuram 3 1 0

Barwani 2 2 0

122 94 14

Total seats : 230

INC : 122

BJP : 94

Tough fight : 14

Others : 1

Key Factors

BJP had been alleged of various scams in their pockets. Launching a blistering attack, Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee president JituPatwari alleged that the state Government has allotted land worth `500 crore’ to RSS in various cities by circumventing the rules. It didn’t stop here, they have been alleged with number of scams including Vyapam, illegal sand mining, 2500-crore Simhastha scam, dams and ponds scam, mid-day meal scam etc. Let’s examine some of these scams closely & assess future repercussion of these for BJP.

Starting with the biggest scam of all ‘the Vyapam scam.’ The Vyapam scam was an entrance examination, admission & recruitment scam that was happened in Madhya Pradesh in 2013. It involved politicians, senior and junior officials and businessmen systematically employing imposters to write papers, manipulate exam hall seating arrangements and supply forged answer sheets by bribing officials.

Now coming to the allegation of illegal sand mining on Chouhan’s government. The state government has banned sand mining in Narmada plan in 2012 but Only 30 per cent of the sand mining happening is legal. Only the legal mining has been banned, but, about 70 per cent of mining is illegal. The sand ‘mafia’ is governing & bending the rules in their favour & also accused Chouhan’s nephew’s involvement in it. It has created unrest amongst the legal dealers.

And lastly talking about one of the major issues- the farmer’s suicide in M.P where more than 26 lakh farmers have taken farm loans worth Rs 13,000 crore from co-operative banks, says bank sources while the latest national crime record bureau (NCRB) claims that 11,000 farmers have committed suicide in the state in the last nine years. These statistics rise every year & suicide rate of M.P farmers are increasing every year. Ironically, Madhya Pradesh has registered a record 20 per cent agricultural growth in the last few years, which happens to be a world record. But these records seems to be useless for the farmers as they are forced to committ suicide.

Although Chouhan government claims there is no possible threat of anti-incumbency in the state but the recent civic poll results says a different story which may stress the Chouhan government. Congress bagged 20 out of 24 seats in Ragogarh civic body elections in Madhya Pradesh, while the ruling BJP has won four wards. In Chitrakoot, Congress nominee NeelanshuChaturvedi won by 14,133 votes, the party’s biggest margin here in the last 14 years. Though BJP has been ruling the Madhya Pradesh for 14 years, it won the Chitrakoot constituency only once in 2008, that too by a mere 722 votes. And in 2013 assembly polls, the BJP lost Chitrakoot again to the Congress by 10,970 votes.

The results of Madhya Pradesh Municipal Council Elections 2018 and Madhya Pradesh Municipal Bypolls where declared on 20th January 2018. A total of 20 municipal bodies (Nagar PalikaParishads and Nagar Parishads) went to polls and bypolls in 10 districts of Madhya Pradesh. Voting was held on January 17. It is being said to be a fight between the Congress and the BJP in the ‘semi-final’ of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly Elections 2018. The BJP is in power in 13 of the local bodies that went to polls and Congress rules 7. Though BJP won 13 bodies, the results are considered to be alarming as the popularity of congress in the state in increasing day by day.

Chouhan should start considering the congress as a threat to their long term government, where as, this could be a positive sign for the congress, a new beginning in Madhya Pradesh after more then a decade. The speculation of popular faces for C.M candidature in M.P are JyotiradityaMadhavraoScindia who is popular among young generation, Arun Yadav who has been working hard in M.P & not leaving any chances to target the government or Ajay Singh who is popular in Mahakushal and some part of Baghelkhand&Bundelkhand Region. There are speculations of different names has been speculated under media but as of now the cards of the congress remain under suspense. However unity among congress leaders is very key for the election. Its also a deciding factor on the extent INC can combat the election with collective effort.

After the last polls in 2018, the state saw a change of guard mid-way in March 2020 when the Congress government led by veteran politician Kamal Nath collapsed and the BJP stormed back to power after remaining in opposition for just 15 months.

The BJP is facing the challenge of overcoming anti-incumbency of nearly four terms, barring a 15 months period from Dec 2018 to March 2020 when the congress was in power. The Congress, on the other hand , will seek encash what it sees as resentment among people against the Shivraj Singh Chauhan Government on a range of issues.

Farmers and humble background community is also not happy with the government and itself wants change in ruling party.

BJP has been marked as a ‘hindutva’ or ‘hindu’ party since ever, & the population distribution makes it easier for the BJP to conquer the ‘heart of India’. They very easily consolidate over the hindu majority which is 90.9% of the total population, & hence they are tasting the fruits of victory year after year. The statistics in M.P is quite simple & clearly resembles why the BJP is emerging victorious every time. Inspite of winning, the latest civic poll had stressed out BJP to an extent as they cannot ignore the rest seven bodies and they should be quite sceptical after what had happened in Gujarat.

Madhya Pradesh is largely a rural state. Crop failure in 2017 only exacerbated the farmer crisis. The issue grabbed national headlines last June after farmers protest turned violent in Mandsaur. According to this Firstpost article, Madhya Pradesh farmers — like their counterparts in Gujarat and Rajasthan — have been facing the problem of low prices for crops and interference of commission agents. According to a Hindustan Times report, about one-tenth of the farmer suicides in the past 16 years took place between 2016 and 2017. With a farm loan waiver not in sight, a report in Hindustan Times stated that BJP’s failure to resolve the crisis may hit its rural vote bank.

The number of educated unemployed youth is rising. As per the 2017 economic survey report, at least 14.1 lakh youth are unemployed, of which nearly 12.9 lakh are educated. “The percentage of educated unemployed increased from 79.60 percent in 2015 to 85.74 percent by the end of December 2017," a senior official told The Times of India.

In upcoming election former CM Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh are going to play crucial role to polarise the votes in favour of party and form government.

Result Probability:

We have conducted Several PRA, Semi-Focused Discussion with diverse set of population in different locations of MP of all over the region. Survey conducted in reputed organization India each Assembly Constituency with 1500 person from different community.

% Rural Urban

Happy with Government 25 45

UnHappy with Government 70 55

% BJP INC Other

Whom you want to

win 43 48 9

After Analysis of several factors, our prediction is that the election MP is going to be an interesting and tough fight between Congress and BJP. Our preliminary prediction is as follows