‘Digvijaya offered me Bhopal LS seat,’ claims BJP veteran Babulal Gaur

Gaur claimed that he was “offered” the Congress ticket by senior party leader and former MP chief minister Digvijaya Singh.

While the BJP is still smarting under the defeat in assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh along with Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, its veteran Babulal Gaur on Thursday created a flutter with the claim that he was offered to contest the Lok Sabha polls from Bhopal seat on Congress’s ticket. Babulal Gaur is a former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and a veteran in the state politics.

Eighty-eight-year-old Gaur has maintained in the past that he was not yet ready to take retirement from politics. (HT Photo)

Gaur claimed that he was “offered” the Congress ticket by senior party leader and former MP chief minister Digvijaya Singh. He also said he “will think about” the offer of contesting the Lok Sabha polls as Congress candidate. News agency ANI quoted Gaur as saying, “He (Singh) visited me and offered me to contest polls from Bhopal Lok Sabha seat on Congress ticket. I told him I will think about it.”

The development follows reports that the BJP would field senior party leaders from Madhya Pradesh in the Lok Sabha elections, likely to be held in April-May this year, on the “winnability” factor signalling that many veterans may be ignored in ticket allocations by the central leadership of the party.

Eighty-eight-year-old Gaur, on the other hand, has maintained in the past that he was not yet ready to take retirement from politics.

The Congress stunned the BJP in 2018 assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, where the party was ruling for 15 years. The Congress won 114 seats, two short of the majority mark in the 230-member Madhya Pradesh assembly, while the BJP could win only 109 seats in the elections.