Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday attended the Madhya Pradesh Core Group meeting at the residence of BJP national president JP Nadda in the national capital ahead of the state assembly election.

Earlier on August 17, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) released its first list of candidates for poll-bound Madhya Pradesh.

BJP declared the names of 39 candidates for the 230-seat Madhya Pradesh Assembly. The party has fielded its Indore district president Rajesh Sonkar to contest the election from the Sonkachh seat in Dewas district

Former minister and Veteran Congress leader Sajjan Singh Verma is the sitting MLA from Sonkatch seat. In the 2013 state assembly polls, BJP leader Sonkar defeated Tulsi Ram Silawat (now Water Resource Minister) when Silawat was in Congress from the Sanwer seat in the Indore district.

In the last 2018 assembly polls, Mr Sonkar lost to Mr Silawat (when he was still in Congress) from the same Sanwer seat. But later in 2020, Mr Silawat quit the Congress party along with Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scidia and others and joined the BJP. After that Mr Silawat contested the by-poll on BJP’s ticket from the Sanwer seat