New Delhi: With assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh slated for next year, former Madhya Pradesh chief minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Uma Bharti has decided to make her life story public, briefly, through Twitter — a first for an Indian politician.
Among the incidents she wrote about in her first such series of 41 tweets Sunday , Bharti mentioned how it was Union home minister Amit Shah — then BJP national president — who ensured that she wasn’t dropped from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet in 2014 over an affidavit submitted by the Ganga Rejuvenation ministry (now Jal Shakti ministry), of which she was in charge.
Bharti tweeted Sunday that two “very big” publications had sought her permission to publish her “biography” but she “didn’t consent”. The 63-year-old added, “I am a very ordinary person, there is nothing special that a book should be written about.”
She further said that “instead of writing a book”, she would “dictate” her biography to a colleague from her own office and post it on Twitter for public consumption. “In those words, language, comma, full stop will also be mine,” she said, requesting print and TV media to keep reading her posts.
“Between Guru Purnima and Raksha Bandhan, I will share with you all the important events from my birth till now. That’s why everyone is requested to take the time to read it as the report card of my life,” she wrote. Guru falls on 13 July (Wednesday) and Raksha Bandhan on 11 August this year.
According to sources in the BJP, Uma Bharti felt there was a lack of clarity among the public over issues pertaining to her, and decided to publish the thread on Twitter. “More such tweets regarding the anti-liquor drive, the BJP organisation and other important issues related to her life will be made public by her,” a close aide of Bharti told ThePrint.
ThePrint reached Bharti via telephone but did not receive a response. This report will be updated as and when a response is received.
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Anti-liquor drive in MP
In the series of tweets she posted Sunday, Bharti said she felt the need to explain why she took up the issue of liquor consumption in Madhya Pradesh.
“Now, I have launched a campaign against liquor in Madhya Pradesh, which is according to the policy of the party, and it is my request that BJP-ruled states should have a similar liquor policy,” she wrote.
Last month, reiterating her demand for total prohibition in the state, Bharti had hurled cow dung at a liquor shop in MP’s Orchha, later sharing a video of the act on Twitter.
6. शराबबंदी राजनीतिक नहीं सामाजिक अभियान है। समाज की शक्ति और एकता से ही इसका समाधान होगा, किंतु ओरछा के दरवाजे पर रामराजा सरकार के दर्शन के लिए आते और जाते हुए यह शराब की दुकान हमारी रामभक्ति को चुनौती दे रही है। pic.twitter.com/2Y7vlRuBLn
— Uma Bharti (@umasribharti) June 14, 2022
In March, Bharti had created a stir after hurling a stone at a liquor shop in Bhopal and threatened to launch an agitation against the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government’s new excise policy.
‘Amit Shah was always in favor of ‘aviralta of Ganga’
In those 41 tweets, Bharti also narrated how the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation was taken away from her during PM Modi’s first tenure and she was given another portfolio.
She wrote that “indiscipline” could have cost her a place in the Union Cabinet, but this was staved off thanks to an intervention by then BJP president Amit Shah.
Thie “indiscipline”, here, is a reference to an affidavit that was submitted in the Supreme Court in 2014 over 72 proposed power projects in Uttarakhand, according to Bharti.
While Bharti’s ministry had opposed these projects in the affidavit, the ministries of Power and Environment, Forest and Climate Change favoured them. This resulted in the top court asking the central government to review and stick to a uniform stand on the matter.
“The affidavit of my ministry given on the cleaning of Ganga was contrary to the decision taken by the government. A committee of the Ministry of Energy, Environment and Water Resources was formed in which all three had to draft an affidavit on the proposed power project on the Ganga. After the consent of the cabinet secretary and the PMO, it was to be submitted in the Supreme Court through our ministry,” she explained in a tweet Sunday.
However, the three ministries were unable to reach an agreement on the continuity of the River Ganga, Bharti said.
“I, along with my officers, submitted the affidavit in the court without consulting anyone. In that affidavit, the Ministry of Energy and Environment and Trivendra Rawat’s [then CM] government of Uttarakhand registered their dissent. Then the court, immediately after consulting the central government, termed that affidavit invalid,” she revealed.
The veteran BJP leader said that the matter is still pending in court and perhaps the central government has not been able to file a fresh affidavit in this regard.
“Naturally, I committed indiscipline, I could have been sacked from the Cabinet, but the ‘aviralta’ (flow of the river) of the Ganga survived,” Bharti wrote, explaining how it was the intervention by Amit Shah that safeguarded her place in the Union Cabinet.
She wrote: “Home Minister Amit Shah, who was our [BJP] national president at that time, was always in favour of the ‘aviralta of Ganga’. I was not fired due to his intervention, but the department was changed, that much had to happen.”
Bharti added her ministry was then allocated to Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, who “never separated” her from the Ganga.
“He [Gadkari] continued to find a way to keep me connected to the Ganga; something Amit Shah also supported. Amit ji is now the Home Minister at the Centre but then he was the president of the party and I contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections following his advice,” she revealed.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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