Bhopal: Senior leader L K Advani's omission from the candidates' list of Bharatiya Janata Party may have worked as an eye-opener to rebellious BJP Lok Sabha seat aspirants in Madhya Pradesh.
That the BJP would sideline even a towering leader like Advani, 91, is a scenario many Madhya Pradesh seat aspirants didn't visualise.
So they are gradually falling in line with the party diktat.
Former Chief Minister and BJP leader Babulal Gaur had created a flutter earlier by saying that he is interested in contesting elections.
The 88-year-old Gaur even claimed that Congress had offered him a ticket to contest from Bhopal Lok Sabha seat. He was hinting that that he might even consider the proposal.
After Advani's omission from candidates' list, the 10-time BJP MLA has softened his stance.
“If the party gives me a ticket, I will contest, if not then I will work for the party in the Lok Sabha elections,” Gaur said.
Gaur was planning to contest from Bhopal Lok Sabha seat, a saffron bastion for three decades.
The Congress party hasn’t won this seat since 1989, when retired Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh Susheel Chandra Verma defeated Congress candidate and cricket legend -- Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi by over 80,000 votes. (Verma went on to represent Bhopal for three more terms after wins in 1991, 1996 and 1998.)
However, the results of the assembly elections last year indicate that the a lot has changed in the saffron bastion in the last 30 years.
The Congress wrested three of the eight assembly segments within the Bhopal constituency. The BJP won five seats, one less than the the 2013 assembly elections.
The 2018 assembly election voting trend suggests that the BJP's margin has dropped to just 63,457 votes.
In 2014, the BJP had won the seat by a margin of over 3.70 lakh votes, riding on the Modi wave.
The BJP is facing a stiff challenge in another bastion – the Indore Lok Sabha seat, which the party has won eight times in a row.
Veteran BJP leader and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan (76), who has won the last eight elections from Indore, is facing a rebellion from some senior BJP leaders.
Sumitra Mahajan is considered to be a strong contender for the seat this time too.
Senior BJP leader and poet Satyanarayan Sattan has said the party should change the candidate and threatened to contest as an independent if Mahajan is re-nominated from Indore.
The Indore seat sets the political tone for Malwa-Nimar region, which houses eight of the 29 Lok Sabha seats and 66 of the 230 legislators.
In 2014, the BJP won all the eight Lok Sabha seats of the region, considered to be an RSS stronghold.
In the assembly elections, the Congress managed to form the government in the state with the backing of 35 of the 66 assembly seats it won from the region.
If the assembly elections are any indication, the Congress and the BJP are evenly poised in four Lok Sabha seats each.
The BJP still has an edge overall in the region, with a margin of 95,130 votes. But that lead is because of the influence of BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, whose close-aide Ramesh Mendola won by a margin of 71,011 votes from Indore-II constituency.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Sumitra Mahajan had won 4.66 lakh votes against her nearest rival Satyanarayan Patel of Congress.
The other leader who has fallen in line with the party diktat is Abhishek Bhargava, son of Leader of Opposition Gopal Bhargava.
Abhishek, who was demanding a Lok Sabha seat, withdrew his claim. In his Facebook post, Abhishek said, 'with sense of guilt after reading the statements of Modiji and Advaniji on vanshvad (dynastic politics), I withdraw my claim.'
Abhishek was the not the only one who was demanding Lok Sabha ticket.
Party sources said there was hectic lobbying by a group of senior leaders including Rampal Singh, a close aide of former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
The BJP has announced its first list.
The five MPs who have not found a place include Anoop Mishra, nephew of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee from Morena; Dr Bhagirath Prasad who switched over to the BJP from the Congress; Gyan Singh from Shahdol, Jyoti Dhurve from Betul and Chintamani Malaviya from Ujjain.
Madhya Pradesh will go to the polls in four phases from April 29.
