{"id":506318,"date":"2024-03-26T19:40:59","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T14:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/?p=506318"},"modified":"2024-03-26T19:40:59","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T14:10:59","slug":"congress-madhya-pradesh-candidates-lok-sabha-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/politics\/congress-madhya-pradesh-candidates-lok-sabha-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"With bank account sealed, Congress turns to moneybags in Madhya Pradesh for funds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By Neeraj Mishra<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh returns to his old Lok Sabha constituency Rajgarh after 33 years while former union minister Kantilal Bhuria is contesting for the sixth time from Jhabua after having lost it twice earlier. They are part of the Congress push to better its tally from the state from one seat to maybe five. The problem this time is that they are assured of not receiving any central party funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>PCC president Jitu Patwari has pushed the candidature of Akshay Kanti Jain from Indore in the hope that he will not only finance his own elections but also contribute to depleted party funds. Jain hopes to garner support from the rich Jains in the city as he has become the first candidate from that sect to contest for the Lok Sabha. He faces sitting MP Shankar Lal Lalwani, an unpopular Sindhi candidate of the BJP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Five sitting MLAs have been nominated by the Congress while the sitting MP from Chhindwara Nakul Nath returns to save his seat. The party has yet to decide on six seats including the crucial ones of Gwalior and Guna. It has offered the Khajuraho seat to the Samajwadi Party. On paper at least, this is the best team the Congress can nominate under the given circumstances. Arun Shrivastav has been nominated from Bhopal as it has the largest number of Kayastha voters in the state. Kayastha and Muslims have lived in harmony for centuries in the city and are expected to vote together. The BJP has denied a ticket to sitting MP Pragya Thakur\u00a0and shown faith in Bhopal Mayor Alok Sharma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the midst of what might turn out to be a compelling election, the IAS community in the state has been split into two over the alleged ill treatment of promoted IAS officers and direct recruits. It started with Lalit Dahima, a secretary-level promoted IAS officer of the state PSC cadre, reaching late for a meeting called by Principal Secretary Manish Rastogi. It appears after some furious exchange of words, Rastogi asked his junior to leave the room in front of other members of the department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The issue has ballooned into an RR vs PSC officers issue after several junior officers complained of \u00a0similar ill treatment. Madhya Pradesh has about 300 IAS officers but the real power is usurped by about a dozen IAS officers close to the chief minister. This has been a tradition since the days of Arjun Singh, which only gained total acceptance under Shivraj Singh Chouhan. How the discontent will affect the working of the Mohan Yadav government remains to be seen but the Congress is not complaining as it plays the field for the Lok Sabha elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PCC president Jitu Patwari has pushed the candidature of Akshay Kanti Jain from Indore in the hope that he will not only finance his own elections but also contribute to depleted party funds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":506320,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497,4,125714],"tags":[111,162404,12481,4074,100384,805,110,347],"yst_prominent_words":[],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2024\/03\/26154045\/WhatsApp-Image-2024-03-21-at-12.37.28-PM-1.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506318"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506318"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=506318"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=506318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- html is corrupted -->