'Unimpressive past' casts its shadow on BJP's mega meet in Bhopal

When the MP BJP is making massive preparations for its two-day meet, to be inaugurated by BJP national president Amit Shah on October 30 and 31, not so encouraging statistics are trailing it.

When the state BJP is making massive preparations for its two-day mega meet at BHEL Dussehra Maidan on October 30 and 31, not so encouraging statistics are trailing it.

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The meet, to be inaugurated by BJP national president Amit Shah, is aimed at mobilising the party workers at the mandal and ward levels for the first phase of civic bodies elections, scheduled sometime in next month.

As far as the state's 14 Nagar Nigams are concerned the BJP won nine mayoral seats, while Congress and BSP won two seats each in the previous elections, held in 2009. A eunuch Kamla Bai had won the Sagar mayoral election by a huge margin of over 40,000 votes.

The BJP won Gwalior, Bhopal, Indore, Khandwa, Burhanpur, Ratlam, Jabalpur, Rewa and Ujjain mayoral elections. Congress won Katni and Dewas, while BSP had Satna and Singrauli. Kamla Bai had fought as an independent candidate.

Though the figure of nine seats out of a total 14 stood as impressive for the party, the latter had to sweat it out to win Bhopal, Indore, Khandwa, Burhanpur, Jabalpur and Rewa.

The BJP candidate Krishna Murari Moghe's victory margin in Indore was merely about 3,000 votes against the Congress candidate Pankaj Sanghvi. In Burhanpur and Rewa, the BJP won the mayoral elections by less than 5,000 votes.

The state BJP spokesperson Deepak Vijayvargiya said it was true that the party faced challenges in certain cities in 2009, but given the government's impressive work of development in the past five years the party would face no difficulty this time and would do better this time.