Congress picks ministers in MP and Rajasthan with 2019 Lok Sabha seats in mind

The Congress appeared to choose its ministers in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan with an eye on the coming Lok Sabha election, seeking representation from as many of the seats it hopes to win as possible. The two states together have 54 parliamentary constituencies.

New faces under veteran chief ministers

In each state roughly three in four ministers are holding office for the first time, read as a sign that party president Rahul Gandhi took the final call and pushed for younger faces, even though both chief ministers, Kamal Nath in Madhya Pradesh and Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan, are party veterans. In Rajasthan, 17 of the 23 ministers are new to the job, while in Madhya Pradesh 22 of 28 are entering the council of ministers for the first time. Five posts in Rajasthan and six in Madhya Pradesh were left vacant for later expansion. The lists were settled in Delhi after several days of talks.

Madhya Pradesh: mapping ministers to seats

Ministers come from Twenty of the state’s 29 Lok Sabha seats. Bhopal, Indore, Jabalpur and Dhar each got two ministers and Gwalior got three. Indore is a bastion of Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan of the BJP, and Jabalpur was represented by BJP state president Rakesh Singh. Winning six of Dhar district’s seven assembly seats has given the Congress hope of taking the Dhar Lok Sabha seat, and Union Minister NS Tomar, the Gwalior MP, was also seen as facing a tough contest.

The Malwa-Nimad and Gwalior-Chambal regions together got 14 ministers, while Vindhya, where the Congress won only six of 30 seats, got one. Areas where the party fared badly went unrepresented, such as Mandsaur, with one win from eight seats, and Khajuraho, with two wins from eight. The BJP has held Khajuraho since 2004 and Mandsaur since 1989, apart from a Congress victory in 2009. Morena district also has no minister even though the party took seven of its eight assembly seats, though the BJP has held the Morena Lok Sabha seat since 1996.

Rajasthan: Jats and SC/ST leaders

In Rajasthan, half of the council comes from Jat and SC/ST communities, which supported the Congress in the assembly election. The party won most SC/ST assembly seats and hopes to repeat that in the state’s seven reserved Lok Sabha seats.

See also: Indian National Congress · Constituencies

Originally published on 27 December 2018. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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