Fourth General Election in Madhya Pradesh-A Reply

A Reply WHILE commenting on my paper, W H Morris-Jones and Biplab Das pp 178-80) have raised some issues which I feel should be discussed.
They have pointed out that my discussion of electoral performance based on regional differences in Madhya Pradesh is exaggerated. 1 am afraid I cannot subscribe to this view. I toured extensively ail the three regions of MP at the time of the delimitation of constituencies for 1967 elections, it was my observation then that most of the cases for delimitation of territorial constituencies were pleaded on strictly regional lines. This held true both for objections to adding some area of the other region to a constituency being carved out from their region and Wee versa. The intensity of regional feelings can be realised from the fact that even election campaigns were geared to these regional considerations. The Jan Sangh in its 1967 election campaign accused the Congress of giving a privileged treatment to the Mahakoshal region and ignoring the Madhya Bharat region. This was made an election issue in the 1967 party campaign, too. Another important point which must be stressed is that the important Congress leaders (ministers), won (all the seats in Mahakoshal by wide margins (except in one district), no seat in Madhya Bharat-Bhopal (lost all by wide margins), and only one seat in Vindhya Pradesh (by a narrow margin) [see Table 1]. It seems that regional loyalty is an essential characteristic of MP politics.