Prahlad Singh Patel: CM face will be known in 2018

BHOPAL: Senior BJP leader and Damoh MP Prahlad Singh Patel avoided naming Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s name as BJP’s chief ministerial face for the 2018 assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh.
Answering a question by a reporter in a ‘meet the press’ programme here on Sunday; Patel said the chief minister’s face will be known “only in 2018”.
The reporter asked Patel that BJP did not have a chief ministerial candidate in the recently held Uttar Pradesh polls and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was largely seen as the face of the saffron party. He went on to ask whether Chouhan will be the face of the party in next year’s state elections.
Patel neither said yes nor no and answered in guarded language. “This will be known only in 2018,” he said.
Patel came into prominence after BJP’s spectacular performance in Manipur assembly elections, where he was the party in-charge and strategised campaigning with national president Amit Shah.
Referring to CM’s Narmada Sewa Yatra, Patel said, “Illegal mining should be stopped immediately.” Patel who hails from Narsinghpur situated on the river banks and has performed Narmada ‘parikrama’ many times, said that Narmada is like his mother but it is ailing.