The Samajwadi Party announced on Saturday the nomination of Manoj Yadav as their candidate for the Khajuraho Lok Sabha constituency in Madhya Pradesh. This move sets up a contest against the incumbent BJP state unit chief and sitting MP, V D Sharma.
Khajuraho is the solitary constituency allotted to the Samajwadi Party in Madhya Pradesh, as part of a seat-sharing agreement with the Congress under the INDIA bloc.
Yash Bhartiya, the national spokesman for the Samajwadi Party, confirmed the selection of Manoj Yadav, stating, "Manoj Yadav will be the candidate of SP from Khajuraho seat. He hails from Shikohabad in Uttar Pradesh but settled in Madhya Pradesh."
Yadav previously contested the election on a Samajwadi Party ticket from the Vidisha Lok Sabha constituency in 2014, where he secured only 3,293 votes.
Bhartiya explained that Yadav had initially been slated as the candidate for the Bijawar assembly seat in the 2023 elections. However, his candidature was changed later, with the party opting to field former MLA Rekha Yadav instead.
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The BJP has put forward its state party president Vishnu Dutt Sharma for re-election as the Member of Parliament from Khajuraho, marking his second consecutive candidacy for the seat.
Khajuraho has historically been a stronghold for the BJP, with the party securing victories since 2004. Notably, firebrand leader Uma Bharti was elected for four terms between 1989 and 1998. The seat briefly shifted to the Congress in 1999 with the election of senior leader Satyavrat Chaturvedi, before returning to the BJP with Ram Krishna Kusumaria's victory in 2004.
Out of the 29 seats in Madhya Pradesh, the Congress has announced candidates for 25 seats, with the exceptions of Khandwa, Gwalior, and Morena.
The BJP, on the other hand, has declared candidates for all 29 seats in the state.
The constituencies of Sidhi, Shahdol (ST), Jabalpur, Mandla (ST), Balaghat, and Chhindwara will head to polls in the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections starting on April 19.
In the 2019 elections, the BJP secured victories in 28 out of 29 constituencies in Madhya Pradesh, with the Chhindwara Lok Sabha seat being the sole exception, retained by the Congress.
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