Who Is Ashish Dubey, The Winning Candidate From Jabalpur?

The saffron party has secured another victory in Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur with BJP candidate Ashish Dubey winning with 7,90,133 votes, defeating Congress’ Dinesh Yadav who bagged 3,03,459 votes. The winning margin for the BJP is a massive 4,86,674 votes. The BJP has consistently won the Jabalpur seat since 1996.

Ashish Dubey entered into active politics in 1990. He has held several positions in the party’s state committees. His late father Ambikeshwar Dubey was also an active member of the BJP with several important responsibilities being shouldered. The nomination of the Ashish Dubey was reportedly considering his and his father’s organisational activities and contributions in strengthening the party.

The Jabalpur seat has been with the BJP since 1996. The last time Congress won the seat was in 1991 with candidate Shrawan Kumar Patel. The saffron party’s sitting MP Rakesh Singh has been representing the constituency for the past four terms.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the sitting MP won the seat with a massive 65 per cent vote share, while the Congress candidate was reduced to 29 per cent from 35 per cent the Congress got in 2014.

Congress candidate Dinesh Yadav’s election campaigns made headlines for its unique approach where he met the public, and along with votes, asked for notes (rupees) as well. Yadav said that since the BJP has seized all accounts of the Congress party, he needed people’s financial support to contest the elections as well. In the door-to-door campaign titled, “One Vote, One Note Campaign,” he sought votes and a small sum between Rs. 10 and Rs. 100.

Yadav is a middle-class businessman, but for a long time he has been associating with urban and municipal body politics. He has served as a councilor in Jabalpur Municipal Corporation many times and has been a councilor in the urban civic body. Besides, he once contested unsuccessfully in the mayoral elections as well.