FIGHT FOR BHIL TRIBE HOMETURF

IT'S the Bhil tribe politicians who have mostly ruled the roost in Ratlam-ST constituency of western Madhya Pradesh over the last 72 years.

- ANURAAG SINGH

Barring 1971 and 1977, when Bhilala tribe politician Bhagirath Bhanwar won the seat as Samyukt Socialist Party and Janta Party candidate respectively, it's the Bhuria tribe politicians only who have won the seat 13 times on Congress ticket and only twice as BJP candidates.

Anita Nagarsingh Chouhan, the first-time BJP candidate and wife of Madhya Pradesh minister Nagar Singh Chouhan, wants to be the second Bhilala tribe to win the Bhil-dominant seat, which has 14,000 female voters than male voters.

Chouhan is the current Alirajpur district panchayat chairperson and has been on opposition Congress' target for allegedly being a rubber stamp candidate of the minister-husband. She is contesting against Congress' 73-year-old Bhil tribe politician and ex-Union minister Kantial Bhuria, who won the seat five times (1998, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2015) but lost in 2014 and 2019. The contest is seen as the toughest battle among all the eight seats of western and south-western MP where the polling is due in the fourth phase on Monday.

The constituency is spread across eight assembly segments (seven of them being tribal reserved) of Ratlam, Jhabua and Alirajpur districts, which border Gujarat and Rajasthan. It has seen two prominent Bhuria-surname politicians Late Dilip Singh Bhuria and Kantilal Bhuria.