Lok Sabha polls: David vs Goliath battle in Indore as Congress pins hope on rookie against BJP stalwart
Congress has fielded Akshay Bam, a newbie in the poll arena from Indore Lok Sabha constituency, an unbreached BJP citadel for 35 years, against sitting MP Shankar Lalwani, who had won the 2019 contest by a huge margin of over 5.47 lakh votes. Bam (45), a businessman from the Jain community, has to shoulder a big responsibility of keeping the Congress cadre motivated in view of three former MLAs and several workers of the party joining the ruling BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
Prominent among Congress defectors are Pankaj Sanghvi, Sanjay Shukla, and Vishal Patel.
He faces sitting BJP MP Shankar Lalwani, 62, who had won the last contest against his Congress challenger Pankaj Sanghvi by possibly the highest vote margin in Madhya Pradesh.
Indore is the commercial capital of Madhya Pradesh and is the cleanest city in India.
The BJP holds all the eight assembly constituencies under the Indore Lok Sabha seat.
The BJP has set a target to win the Indore constituency, the largest one in terms of the number of voters at 25.13 lakh in Madhya Pradesh, by a margin of 8 lakh votes.
Notably, Bam has not contested any election from Congress. He was denied a ticket by Congress from Indore assembly constituency 4 last year, triggering protests from his supporters.
The BJP has been winning the Indore Lok Sabha constituency since 1989 when Sumitra Mahajan defeated former MP chief minister and ex-Union Minister Prakash Chand Sethi.
Mahajan, a former Lok Sabha Speaker, won this seat multiple times until she was replaced in
