Bhopal, Oct 23 (IANS): Madhya Pradesh Congress on Wednesday alleged that a government employee in the Vijaypur Assembly seat in the Sheopur district is campaigning for the BJP candidate.

MP Congress election in-charge J. P. Dhanopia wrote a letter to Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Sukhveer Singh mentioning that Dr. Gajendra Singh Tomar, who is posted as a civil surgeon in Morena District Hospital is campaigning for BJP candidate for the Vijaypur bypolls."

Notably, the by-elections in two assembly seats - Vijaypur and Budhni (Sehore district) in Madhya Pradesh are scheduled for November 13. Vijaypur Assembly seat of Sheopur district falls under the Morena Lok Sabha constituency in the Gwalior-Chambal region.

The BJP has fielded state forest minister Ramniwas Rawat for Vijaypur, who had won this seat between 1990 and 2023 on Congress' symbol. In the last election, he had won from Vijaypur with a margin of more than 17000 votes.

However, he resigned from the party's membership and also from the state Assembly and joined the ruling BJP during the Lok Sabha elections. His resignation has necessitated bypolls in Vijaypur.

Congress has fielded a new face Mukesh Malhotra from Vijaypur, while former minister Rajkumar Patel from Budhni, the bastion of BJP veteran Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Patel was elected MLA from Budhni twice between 1993 and 1998.

Bypolls in Budhni was mandated after former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan resigned from the state Assembly following his victory in Lok Sabha from Vidisha. Chouhan, now Union Agriculture Minister, had won five consecutive elections from Budhni between 2006 and 2023.

In the 2023 Assembly elections, Chouhan won from Budhni by a margin of more than 1.05 lakh votes against Congress' Vikram 'Mastal' Sharma, a TV actor.