By IANS,
Bhopal : Gambling on new faces proved to be a boon for the Madhya Pradesh’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) though it was unfruitful for the Congress in the just concluded assembly elections.
The BJP’s success rate with new faces has been above 60 percent, party leaders said, pointing out that they had fielded 88 such candidates and 55 of them won.
The state capital also saw a number of first-timers fielded by the BJP and except for Alok Sharma from the Bhopal North constituency, all of them won. They include Vishwas Sarang, Dhruv Narayan Singh, Jitendra Daga and Brahmanand Ratnakar.
In the commercial capital Indore, the new entrants who tasted success include district BJP president Sudarshan Gupta, PWD Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya’s close lieutenant Ramesh Mendola, late legislator Laxman Singh Gaud’s wife Malini Gaud and Jitu Jirati who defeated state youth Congress president Jitu Patwari.
Arvind Bhadoria of BJP defeated Congress stalwart Satyadev Katare from Ater.
On the other hand, the Congress fielded 131 fresh faces but only 22 of them were able to make it to the assembly. They were Suresh Chaudhary, Pradman Singh Tomar, Imarti Devi Suman, Narayan Prajapati, Srikant Dubey, Sanjay Pathak, Lakhan Ghanghoriya, Onkar Singh Markam, Narayan Patta, Sunil Jaiswal, Rao Udaipratap Singh, Mer Singh Chaudhary, Dharmu Singh, Bhagwan Singh, Hemraj Kalpani, Xavier Meda, Veer Singh Bhuria, Balsingh Meda, Pratap Grewal, Laxmi Devi Kharari and Brijendra Singh.