No party fields candidates for all seats in MP

Bhopal, Nov 15 (UNI) No political party, including the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and main opposition Congress, has fielded candidates in all 230 constituencies of poll-bound Madhya Pradesh.

Both Congress and BJP have 228 nominees in the fray. The BJP has left Bahoriband constituency to National Democratic Alliance constituent Janata Dal (United) candidate Saroj Bachchan Nayak.

Similarly, the Congress left Burhanpur to United Progressive Alliance component Nationalist Congress Party's Hamid Kazi.

The nomination papers of Mr Jaswant Singh, the Congress candidate from Raisen district's Silwani, and Guna's BJP nominee Gopilal Jatav were rejected on technical grounds.

A total of 3,179 candidates are trying their electoral fortunes at the hustings. According to official statistics, in 2003 2,171 candidates contested therefore the percentage increase is 46.43 with the numerical difference of 1,008 nominees.

Similarly, the number of independent candidates also increased from 879 to 1,374 -- 56.31 per cent -- while the percentage of other political parties' nominees, barring major parties, shot up to 314.12 as their figure escalated from 269 to 845.

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