Bhopal: There is a difference between the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) words and deeds, Ajay Pratap Singh told ThePrint, barely 24 hours after he resigned from primary membership of the party.
Singh, whose tenure as a Rajya Sabha MP from Madhya Pradesh is due to end on 2 April, turned heads Saturday when he parted ways with the BJP and alleged that “corruption” was prevalent within the party and that politics had become a “means for trade”.
“When I joined the BJP as a student leader, veteran Congress leader Arjun Singh was the chief minister and his house was right opposite mine in Sidhi’s Churhat and yet, I chose to work for the BJP and struggled for the party as I believed that this party is the means to bring about a positive change in the society. Had it been that politics was a means to serve oneself, I would have gone with the Congress,” he told ThePrint Sunday.
Asked if he was looking to make the move from the Upper House to the Lower House of Parliament, he added, “Everyone has political ambitions and seeks a ticket, even if I was seeking it, what is wrong about it? I have no problems with the party fielding Dr Rajesh Mishra, but the parameters announced by a party to select candidates and the way they are being selected are vastly different. BJP ki kathni aur karni mein antar hai.”
Sources in the BJP said Ajay Pratap Singh was seeking a ticket to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls from Sidhi — a part of MP’s Vindhya region where Thakurs and Brahmins are known to wield political clout. Sidhi is also home to a significant tribal and OBC population.
Given the caste equations in Sidhi, BJP has traditionally fielded a Brahmin candidate here to counter the influence of Congress’s Ajay Singh, five-time MLA from Churhat and son of former chief minister Arjun Singh. Ajay Pratap Singh who was then with the BJP had unsuccessfully contested the 2008 assembly polls from Churhat against Ajay Singh.
This time around, the BJP has fielded Rajesh Mishra from the Sidhi Lok Sabha seat. The decision came as a surprise for many, given that he had resigned from all party posts in the run-up to the assembly elections last year after the BJP picked its sitting MP from Sidhi, Riti Pathak, as the candidate from Sidhi. Mishra had unsuccessfully contested the 2008 assembly polls from Sidhi on a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) ticket.
Mishra is now up against Kamleshwar Patel, a minister in the Kamal Nath government who was inducted into the Congress Working Committee (CWC) last August. With Patel’s candidature the party is looking to court the OBC vote bank, said sources in the Congress.
Who is Ajay Pratap Singh
In conversation with ThePrint Sunday, Ajay Pratap Singh said the BJP should have considered a “core” and “committed” party worker to contest the Lok Sabha polls from Sidhi if it was looking to field a Brahmin face in line with caste and regional equations.
Asked if he would consider contesting the Lok Sabha polls as an Independent, he responded: “I’m consulting the people in my region as it is a large constituency and I will need support from all to contest the election.”
“If I had self-interest in mind, I would have chosen to remain with the BJP, thinking that merely being identified as a senior leader of the BJP would do me good. But that was not the intention,” he added.
Ajay Pratap Singh’s family was considered close to Kushabhau Thakre, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak who became among the most prominent leaders of the Jana Sangh and later the BJP, serving as its national president from 1998 to 2000.
As for Ajay Pratap Singh, he was seen as an ardent supporter of former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan since his Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) days.
Ajay Pratap Singh has also served as general secretary and vice-president of the MP BJP. During Chouhan’s second term as chief minister, he was appointed chairman of Vindhya Development Authority. The BJP later nominated him to the Rajya Sabha in 2018.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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