The returning officer in Madhya Pradesh’s Panna on Friday cancelled the nomination of only Samajwadi Party (SP) candidate Meera Yadav from Khajuraho.
Now, the INDIA block would be contesting election supporting an independent candidate
Panna district collector and returning officer Suresh Kumar confirmed the development on Friday afternoon, saying an official statement will soon follow.
Yadav’s husband Deep Narayan Yadav levelled allegations of conspiracy against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“It is a conspiracy by the BJP, but we will move to the high court and Supreme Court. INDIA bloc will surely contest the election by supporting an independent candidate,” he said.
“The nomination has been cancelled due to two reasons – missing signature from a page and submitting an old voter list with the form. On Thursday, the officers did not inform us about the mistake during scrutiny. According to the rules, the candidate should be given a chance to rectify the mistake, but here the officers directly informed us about the rejection,” he added.
Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party is part of the national opposition alliance INDIA bloc. Khajuraho was the only constituency in Madhya Pradesh where the Samajwadi party was contesting as part of a seat-sharing pact with the Congress.
Madhya Pradesh has 29 Lok Sabha seats, and Congress is contesting 28.
BJP sitting MP VD Sharma, who has been fielded from Khajuraho, said the rejection of the nomination is a result of confusion among leaders of the INDIA bloc.
He said that Meera’s candidature was announced at the last moment, resulting in a mistake in the nomination form, leading to the cancellation of the nomination.
Yadav is a former SP MLA from Niwadi. She has been contesting the assembly election since 2008. She has lost the past three terms consecutively.
Madhya Pradesh will vote in four phases on April 19, April 26, May 7 and May 13. The ruling BJP hopes to repeat its 2023 assembly election success against the Congress in which it won 163 out of 230 seats. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP won 27 out of 29 seats in MP.
