Politics to heat up in MP as top leaders to visit state

Bhopal: The political environment in Madhya Pradesh is set to heat up in coming days as the state is gearing up for the Assembly elections to be held later this year and the main contenders – BJP and Congress – are in no mood to leave any stone unturned in their efforts to win the polls.

While the BJP’s Central leadership has appointed three union ministers as state election in-charges, party’s key strategist and Union Home Minister Amit Shah has intensified his visits to the poll-bound state.

Shah has visited state capital Bhopal thrice in the last 20 days and held several rounds of high-level meetings at party headquarters.

He will be addressing a gathering of BJP workers in Indore on Sunday.

State Home Minister Narottam Mishra, who is the minister in-charge of Indore, along with national General Secretary and local leader Kailash Vijayvargiya is setting the stage for Shah to charge up the party cadres in Malwa-Nimar region of the state.

Shah was also supposed to visit Bhopal on Sunday, however the programme was later postponed, party sources told IANS.

On the other hand, the Congress is also organising several programmes in Indore. On Sunday, former Chief Minister and party’s state unit chief Kamal Nath will address a ‘Adivasi Yuva Pachayat’.

Former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union president and Congress in-charge of NSUI Kanhaiya Kumar will also be sharing stage with Kamal Nath.

Reacting to Congress’ Indore event, fire-brand BJP leader Narottam Mishra has said: “Kamal Nath will be sharing stage with those who supported ‘tukde tukde’ gang in JNU and shouted slogans to divide the country.”

Meanwhile, Congress spokesperson Abbas Hafeez has said that he has written a letter to BJP President J.P. Nadda, and urged him to curtail the frequency of Shah’s visit to Bhopal as the Union Home Minister’s visit “leave the city shut for hours and triggers traffic snarls”.

“Several parts of Bhopal city gets shut due to heavy security for the Home Minister, which the security agencies obviously have to do, but the public has to suffer due to this… Other Union Ministers also visit Bhopal regularly but disruption is not that much,” he claimed.