Wednesday, May 15

Congress’ Indore Candidate Akshay Kanti Bam Joins BJP, Withdraws Nomination: Reports

Edited by Aishwarya Krishnan
Congress' Indore Candidate Akshay Kanti Bam Joins BJP, Withdraws Nomination: Reports

Congress’ Indore candidate Akshay Kanti Bam joined the BJP and withdrew his nomination from contesting the Lok Sabha elections on Monday, reports said. BJP Madhya Pradesh minister and senior leader Kailash Vijayvargiya today tweeted an image with Akshay Bam sitting with him inside a car and welcomed the former Congress Indore candidate to his party.

Sharing a picture on X (formerly known as Twitter), Vijayvargiya wrote, “We welcome Shri Akshay Kanti Bam ji, Congress Lok Sabha candidate from Indore in the BJP, under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi, National President JP Nadda, Chief Minister Mohan Yadav, and State President VD Sharma.”

Akshay Bam was pitted against the BJP’s sitting MP, Shankar Lalwani, who won the seat with over 5.4 lakh votes in the 2019 elections. Notably, Monday was the last day to withdraw nominations from the Indore seat.

Last week, the BJP won its first seat in Gujarat’s Surat as the nomination papers of the Congress candidate were rejected. Following the rejection of Congress candidate Nilesh Kumbhani for discrepancies in the verification of the signatures of three proposers, the party nominated Suresh Padsala as a substitute. However, his candidature was also rejected on similar grounds. Following this, the other eight independent candidates also withdrew their nominations from the contest.

On April 22, Mukesh Dala, the BJP candidate, was declared elected from the constituency. As a result, the party secured its first win just two weeks before elections were scheduled to be held for the Lok Sabha seat.

The Lok Sabha constituency of Indore has been a stronghold of the saffron party since 1989, with Sumitra Mahajan, the longest-serving woman MP, representing the seat till 2014.