BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh’s longest-serving chief minister and BJP stalwart Shivraj Singh Chouhan is likely to play an important role in national politics with Prime Minister Narendra Modi telling an election rally recently that he wanted to “take him to Delhi (Centre)”.

Chouhan, who was the chief minister from 2005 to 2023, is contesting the Lok Sabha polls from his stronghold Vidisha, an ancient city incidentally located on the Bhopal-Delhi train route.

The BJP candidate is up against Pratap Bhanu Sharma, a Congressman who won the seat in 1980 and 1984 on the back of the post-Emergency Indira Gandhi juggernaut and later, the sympathy wave caused by her death.

Reader correspondent