The nomination of the Samajwadi Party candidate Meera Yadav has been rejected in Khajuraho, giving the BJP candidate and State President Vishnu Dutt Sharma a walkover in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.
In 2019, Sharma won from Khajuraho Lok Sabha seat by 4.92 lakh votes. The rejection of Meera Yadav’s candidature has also fanned rumours that an ‘understanding’ was reached between the BJP and the SP candidate. Yadav though has vehemently denied it. “The returning officer had checked the papers when they were submitted. If there was a problem, I should have been notified then”, she said.
The nomination was rejected citing the candidate’s signatures were missing from a few places in the form and also because of a signature mismatch. Sharma said, “Contesting elections is a challenge. Why would I want to lose the opportunity for a contest?”
Akhilesh Yadav, SP chief, has demanded a judicial probe into the whole matter, terming it a ‘murder of democracy’ by the BJP.
The Congress chief Jeetu Patwari has also demanded an inquiry into the whole matter. Interestingly, Yadav wasn’t the primary choice of Samajwadi Party, an INDIA bloc ally and it had first announced the name of Manoj Yadav as its candidate. Four days later, this was changed despite the candidate expressing his conviction of a win. “There is rampant casteism under the present MP, we shall wipe it out”, he had said.
Meera Yadav is a one-time MLA from the SP and she hails from Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh. Among the 29 seats in Madhya Pradesh, SP is contesting only from Khajuraho. Thursday was the last day for filing nominations for the seat which will go to the polls on April 26. The Bahujan Samaj Party has also fielded a candidate in Khajuraho- and a triangular contest would have kept the BJP on edge. However, that seems unlikely now.
The rejection of the nomination is reminiscent of 2009 when Sushma Swaraj was the BJP candidate from Vidisha in MP. The papers of her main opponent Rajkumar Patel from the Congress were rejected, thus assuring her victory. Swaraj had gone on to win the seat with a four lakh plus margin.
