Indore LS ticket suspense continues, Sumitra Mahajan skips PM event, hints she is ready to contest

Bhopal, Apr 02: As the suspense over BJP's candidate for the Indore Lok Sabha seat continued, its 8-time MP and Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Monday skipped the party's 'Main Hun Chowkidar' programme on Sunday.

On Sunday, Mahajan was not present at the Indore site where the BJP had made arrangements for showing Narendra Modi's 'Main Bhi Chowkidar' event. She is among the few senior BJP leaders to have not prefixed Chowkidar to their names on Twitter.

The BJP is yet to announce Mahajan's name for re-nomination. She has represented Indore in Lok Sabha for eight times.

Earlier, Mahajan had denied speaking on re-nomination, but had said that she was working persistently in favour of her party.

Speculations are rife that the BJP is reconsidering Mahajan's candidature citing 'age factor'. She will be turning 76 on April 12. However, there is speculation that like party patriarch L K Advani (91) and veteran leader Murli Manohar Joshi (85), she too might be axed from the BJP's poll list this time.

There is also talk that local MLA and Indore mayor Malini Gaud might be given the party's ticket in place of Mahajan.

The BJP has so far announced candidates for 18 out of the 29 seats in Madhya Pradesh so far.

Meanwhile, the Congress is repeatedly attacking the BJP for not naming Mahajan so far. "We have handpicked five aspirants and would name our candidate within one hour of the BJP announcing its candidates," PWD minister Sajjan Singh Verma said.

It can be recalled that during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Mahajan, or "Tai (elder sister in Marathi)", as she is called, had won Indore by 4.66 lakh votes. The margin had been stunning as she had survived a scare in 2009 getting only 11,480 votes more than her Congress rival, though most of her wins before that had been by more than one lakh votes.