Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to kickstart the Lok Sabha election campaign in Madhya Pradesh from the Ratlam-Jhabua Scheduled Tribes (ST) constituency tomorrow.
This move underscores the BJP's focus on garnering support in tribal-dominated areas. The Bhil and Bhilala tribes, with their significant influence across 10-12 districts in western Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Gujarat, are at the centre of this strategy.
PM Modi is scheduled to inaugurate and lay the foundation stone for development initiatives totalling approximately ? 7,500 crore.
The focal point of this campaign is a grand janjatiya rally near Gopalpura airstrip in the Bhil-dominated district of Jhabua in western Madhya Pradesh. Preparations are going on to accommodate at least one lakh people.
Historically, the Congress party has predominantly won the Ratlam-Jhabua ST seat, securing victory 14 out of 18 elections and by-elections since 1952.
However, the BJP has made inroads, winning the seat in 2014 and 2019.
The political landscape of this constituency has long been shaped by two prominent Bhil figures.
First is Dilip Singh Bhuria, who won the seat five times for the Congress from 1980 to 1996 and once for the BJP in 2014.
The other is Kantilal Bhuria, a former Union Minister and state Congress chief, who also won the seat five times for the Congress between 1998 and 2015.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Kantilal Bhuria was defeated by the BJP's first-time MLA Guman Singh Damor by a margin of over 90,000 votes. Despite the BJP winning only three of the eight assembly segments in this constituency during the 2018 state elections, their performance improved in the 2023 state elections, winning four segments and narrowly losing another.
The Ratlam-Jhabua ST and Guna seats, traditionally Congress strongholds in Madhya Pradesh, were captured by the BJP in the 2019 national election, buoyed by the Modi wave, even as the state had a Congress government.
Notably, Jhabua's strategic importance lies in its potential to influence tribal voters in neighbouring districts of Gujarat and Rajasthan, making it a key battleground in the BJP's electoral strategy.
