On the eve of the byelection results in Madhya Pradesh, State Cooperatives Minister Arvind Singh Bhadoria on Monday claimed the BJP enjoyed the support of all non-Congress legislators and would comfortably form the government.
Speaking to reporters in Bhopal, he said, “The BJP has 107 MLAs in the Assembly. And with the support of other legislators, including the Independents, our strength stands at 114. So, we will comfortably retain the government.”
“On what basis is the Congress claiming it will return to government,” asked the Minister. Besides MLAs representing the two parties, the Assembly has four Independent, two Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and one Samajwadi Party legislator, who supported the 15-month Congress government.
Although on Friday, BSP MLA Sanjeev Singh Kushwaha told reporters the party’s two MLAs would continue to support the BJP, he retracted the statement on Monday. He told The Hindu, “When the Congress government fell, we supported the BJP government while prioritising the development of our regions as there were no clear instructions from our party. Now, we’ll await the decision of party president Mayawati after the results.”
Exuding confidence that the Congress would win all the 28 seats, State Congress spokesman Bhupendra Gupta said, “The BJP has also publicly offered them (non-Congress, non-BJP legislators) portfolios in the Cabinet. This means they are going to be short of majority and are therefore buying over legislators. The Congress will not require outside support as we will win all the seats.”
In the 230-member Assembly, 29 seats lie vacant. The byelection to 28 of them on November 3 was necessitated by the switchover of 26 Congress MLAs to the BJP in March, and the death of three sitting legislators. While the BJP requires eight seats to retain government single-handedly, the Congress needs to win all the 28 seats to return to government on its own.
