Today in Politics: Last leg of Tamil Nadu campaign, Amit Shah in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra

In the afternoon, he will travel to Katni in Madhya Pradesh where he will go to the Vijaynath Dham mandir in the town. Katni falls under the Khajuraho Lok Sabha constituency from where the BJP’s VD Sharma is again contesting.

The BJP had won 28 of the 29 seats in Madhya Pradesh last time, and it will be seen if it can manage to retain the tally in a state that falls into the Hindi heartland grouping that the BJP almost swept last time.

Shah will also travel to Maharashtra, which has all the indications of being a neck-and-neck fight so far, with both the Maha Vikas Aghadi (Shiv Sena (UBT), Congress, NCP(Sharadchandra Pawar) as well as the ruling NDA (BJP, Shiv Sena NCP) vowing to go all out. The coming election is also the first major electoral contest after the respective splits in the Sena and the NCP.

Shah will address a gathering in Nanded, his first election rally in Maharashtra. Nanded will vote in the second phase scheduled for April 26. Here, the BJP has fielded sitting MP Prataprao Chikhlikar as its candidate, while the Congress party’s former MLA Vasantrao Yashwant is in the fray.

The Nanded Lok Sabha seat is among the eight constituencies in Marathwada region — a region that has remained a challenge for the BJP. Despite many efforts, the BJP has not been able to make deep inroads in Nanded. Even during the Narendra Modi wave in 2014, Ashok Chavan had defeated BJP candidate Digambar Patil. But this time, the BJP hopes to reverse the trend.

In February, the BJP got Congress leader and former chief minister Ashok Chavan to join the party. This was a huge setback to the Congress with Chavan having a huge base in Marathwada.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Chavan, who had then contested as Congress candidate, was defeated by BJP’s Prataprao Chikhlikar.

The BJP is also taking heart from the loss of the Congress hold in the region, which is now limited to the districts of Latur and Nanded.

In 2019, out of the eight seats, the Shiv Sena won three while the BJP won four. The AIMIM was a surprise winner in the lone seat of Chhatrapati Samabhajinagar. In a changed political scenario after the split in the Shiv Sena, the task in front of Shiv Sena *UBT)’s Uddhav Thackeray will be to retain his dominance.

Meanwhile, Raj Thakeray, the president of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) is set to canvas in support of the NDA.

Sanjay Shirsat, the spokesperson for the Shiv Sena made the announcement on Wednesday.

“There was a possibility of vote division which could have resulted in us (NDA alliance) slightly missing our target to win 45 plus seats in Maharashtra. Now, we will definitely achieve our target,” Shirsat told reporters.

Tamil Nadu enters final leg of campaigning

All of the 39 seats in Tamil Nadu head for polls in the first phase, which is just a week away from now.

The state will be closely watched in the days to come for the discourse shaping up. The ruling DMK and its allies had won 38 of the 39 seats in the 2019 polls and this time, the BJP hopes to make a breakthrough in the state.

P Vaidyanathan Iyer writes that the BJP is hoping to cement caste identity – by reaching out to OBC groups such as the Vanniyars — alongside religious identity in the state. Whether that will pay off in Tamil Nadu, where the DMK is a formidable challenge and the BJP has never historically had a presence, remains unclear at the moment.

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Nadda’s schedule

Meanwhile, BJP president JP Nadda will address a rally in Port Blair. The lone Lok Sabha seat of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands will go to the polls in the first phase on April 19.

The BJP’s Bishnu Pada Ray is in the fray and will fight incumbent Congress MP Kuldeep Rai Sharma.

Ray and Sharma have long been rivals in the seat. Ray was first elected to the Lok Sabha from the constituency in 1999 when he defeated Sharma. He again won in 2009 and 2014.

In the 2019 elections, the BJP had fielded Vishal Jolly, and Sharma had defeated Jolly by a slender margin of 1,407 votes.

—With PTI inputs