Congress leaders allege the BJP threatened Akshay Kanti Bam and forced him to defect.
On April 24, a sessions court in Indore directed the police to add an attempt to murder charge in a 17-year-old dispute over a land deal.
The accused in the case was Akshay Kanti Bam, the Congress candidate for Indore Lok Sabha constituency.
Five days later, on Monday, Bam withdrew his nomination and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Madhya Pradesh Congress leaders have claimed that the BJP forced his defection by adding the attempt to murder charge and threatening to file other cases.
“Before they were buying MLAs, now they are threatening them into withdrawing their nomination,” Jitu Patwari, Congress state president, told Scroll. He alleged that a charge was added to the old case to pressure Bam.
Bam did not respond to Scroll’s calls.
Bam’s decision to back out of the contest comes days after another Congress candidate’s nomination was rejected in Surat – leading to an uncontested win for the BJP.
This is the first time that Indore, a bastion of the BJP, will have no Congress candidate in the fray in the Lok Sabha polls.
The nomination of the party’s backup candidate, Moti Singh, was rejected due to technical errors, said Congress leaders. Following Bam’s withdrawal, Singh approached the Indore High Court to have his nomination accepted but his petition was dismissed on Tuesday.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.