Bhopal: Indira Bhawan, the Madhya Pradesh Congress headquarters, wore a festive air Saturday, as it got ready to welcome a batch of fresh party inductees. The fact that six of the nine new members were former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders from across eight Madhya Pradesh districts, who had left the ruling party to join the Congress, made the occasion even more significant.
The state headquarter in Bhopal was decked up in party colours and patriotic songs played in the background, as the nine made the formal switch in the presence of state Congress chief Kamal Nath and national general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala.
The event was among the latest in a series of defections from the state BJP. Two days, later, on Monday, Mahendra Bagri — a former BJP legislator from Panna district — joined the Congress at Kamal Nath’s residence in Bhopal.
प्रदेश कांग्रेस अध्यक्ष कमलनाथ जी के नेतृत्व से प्रभावित होकर पन्ना जिले की गुन्नौर विधानसभा से भाजपा के पूर्व विधायक महेंद्र बागरी जी ने भाजपा छोड़कर कांग्रेस की सदस्यता ग्रहण की।
"जन-जन के नेता कमलनाथ" pic.twitter.com/XYtDFgiFIH
— MP Congress (@INCMP) September 4, 2023
At least 30 BJP office-bearers and leaders including a sitting MLA, a former member of Parliament and six former MLAs have joined the Congress over the past five months, ThePrint has learnt.
According to sources in the Madhya Pradesh Congress, at least 40 leaders have joined the Congress in recent weeks, more than 30 of whom were formerly with the BJP. Sources added that many of these former BJP leaders will be pitted against BJP stalwarts and loyalists of Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in the upcoming assembly polls with the objective of reaping the benefits of a ‘BJP versus BJP’ contest in key constituencies.
Of those 30, prominent names include that of Deepak Joshi — a former three-time MLA and son of former chief minister Kailash Joshi — who at the time of joining the Congress in May this year reportedly accused the BJP of neglecting its core workers. Another notable exit from the BJP was that of Hemant Lariya — brother of BJP MLA from Naryawali, Pradeep Lariya — who has told the media that he was upset with the party for denying him a ticket for the local body elections last year.
Among those inducted into the Congress Saturday were Birendra Raghuvanshi, the MLA from Shivpuri’s Kolaras constituency and Bhanwar Singh Shekhwat, a former two-term MLA who lost to the Congress candidate in Dhar’s Badnawar assembly constituency in the 2018 polls.
Hinting that more defections could follow, K.K. Mishra, chairman of the MP Congress’s media cell, told ThePrint Tuesday, “The same BJP that called for a Congress-mukt Madhya Pradesh will now witness a BJP-mukt Madhya Pradesh by the time of the assembly elections.” Mishra claimed that many other sitting BJP MLAs too will “join the party (Congress) soon”.
Dismissing the claims that these exits reflect poorly on the party, state BJP spokesperson Hitesh Bajpai termed them “election posturing” by leaders who felt they might not get a ticket owing to lack of winnability. “Those leaving the BJP are doing so solely based on local equations. It has nothing to do with any leaders. These trends of quitting and joining the party will continue until ticket distribution concludes,” he told ThePrint.
The Congress too has suffered some losses with its state media coordinator Narendra Saluja, spokesperson Shivam Shukla, former MLAs Abhay Mishra and Neelam Mishra from Rewa having joined the BJP. Husband-and-wife duo Abhay and Neelam were followed by their supporters, including district panchayat member Sundariya Adivasi, district Congress vice president Mishrilal Tiwari and district council member Rajendra Singh.
Also Read: ‘Special focus on defectors’: In MP, Congress woos disgruntled BJP leaders to checkmate CM Chouhan
‘BJP leaders, workers feeling neglected’
While the Congress is yet to declare its first list of candidates, functionaries have hinted that targeting senior BJP leaders will be a key part of the party’s strategy for the assembly polls scheduled to be held later this year.
Addressing a press conference in Bhopal Saturday, Randeep Singh Surjewala, who is also the party’s in charge of Madhya Pradesh, said, “In 2018, 13 BJP ministers had lost and this time, it will be the exact opposite [indicating an interchange in digits] and 31 BJP ministers will lose.”
Several Congress leaders who followed Scindia’s lead to join the BJP in March 2020 — leading to the collapse of the then Kamal Nath-led government in MP — have since returned to the Congress fold. Among them are Baijnath Yadav of Shivpuri, a former member of the state BJP executive committee, Rakesh Gupta, district vice president of the BJP in Shivpuri, and Samandar Patel, a prominent OBC face from Jawad in Neemuch who was at one time counted among Scindia’s lieutenants.
Making an exhibition of his “homecoming”, Baijnath led a convoy of more than 400 cars from Shivpuri to Bhopal in June this year, covering a distance of about 300 km, before joining the Congress, along with several BJP district-level office bearers. In a repeat of his act, Samandar Patel last month led a convoy of more than 500 cars from Neemuch to Bhopal, where he was inducted into the Congress.
Author and political analyst Rasheed Kidwai pointed out that for the Congress, this will be Kamal Nath’s election with little or no interference from the party’s central leadership, while the same is not true for the BJP.
“For the BJP, it is not Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s election. Many senior leaders including Amit Shah and Jyotiraditya Scindia, among others will have a say. There are at least 50 such seats where there are stakes of multiple leaders, resulting in the workers feeling neglected,” he told ThePrint.
Senior leaders of the BJP have hinted at a sense of being sidelined. Earlier this week, former chief minister Uma Bharti was asked about not being invited to join the party’s pre-poll ‘Jan Ashirwad Yatra’. “Maybe they are nervous that if I am there, the attention will be on me,” she told reporters, taking a veiled dig at her colleagues in Madhya Pradesh BJP.
Commenting on her remarks, political analyst Dinesh Gupta told ThePrint, “Like Uma Bharti, there are other senior leaders such as former MP from Barwani, Makhan Singh Solanki, who feel that they are not being given the space in the party that they rightly deserve. This also shows the failure of the party’s top leadership in pacifying these agitated leaders.”
Gupta added: “It is not the first time that these differences among various leaders have come forth. This problem has been there for nearly two years now, but the BJP failed to pacify its disgruntled leaders.”
Congress’s high-profile acquisitions
Many of those who quit the BJP to join the Congress in recent months are either leaders from Scindia’s bastion of Gwalior-Chambal or those who have expressed their disapproval with Scindia loyalists being given prominence on what was once their turf.
At the time of joining the Congress last week, both Raghuvanshi, the MLA from Kolaras, and Shekhawat, the former legislator and RSS functionary who also served as chairman of the Apex Bank, had reportedly accused Scindia loyalists of corruption and political persecution.
प्रदेश कांग्रेस अध्यक्ष कमलनाथ जी के नेतृत्व से प्रभावित होकर विधायक वीरेंद्र रघुवंशी जी, पूर्व विधायक भंवर सिंह शेखावत जी, गुड्डू राजा बुंदेला जी, शिवपुरी से अरविंद धाकड़ जी, गुना से सुश्री अंशु रघुवंशी जी, भिंड से डॉ. केशव यादव जी, भोपाल से डॉ. आशीष अग्रवाल जी एवं नर्मदापुरम से… pic.twitter.com/OfTskpEgX6
— MP Congress (@INCMP) September 2, 2023
Raghuvanshi blamed Pradhuman Singh Tomar and Mahendra Singh Sisodia — both Scindia loyalists and ministers in the Shivraj-led BJP government — of corruption and delaying developmental works. A vocal critic of Scindia loyalist and state minister Rajvardhan Singh Dattigaon, Shekhawat, on the other hand, had even alleged that “loot and corruption reached a peak after Scindia and his supporters joined the BJP”.
Deepak Joshi, the three-time former MLA from Dewas district, had served as minister in the Shivraj government, before losing the 2018 assembly polls to Manoj Chaudhary of the Congress. In 2020, however, Chaudhary became one among the more than 20 MLAs who followed Scindia to the BJP.
While joining the Congress in May this, Joshi told the media, “There is no place for Jan Sangh’s ideology in the BJP anymore. The BJP has become a hi-tech party with no space for common workers,” Joshi had told the media at the time of joining the Congress in May this year.
Prior to that, in March, Yadvendra Singh Yadav — son of late BJP leader Deshraj Yadav, who was a three-time former MLA from Ashok Nagar’s Mungaoli seat — joined the Congress. Yadav too reportedly accused the BJP of neglecting its workers after the entry of Scindia and his loyalists.
Others who switched over to the Congress in recent months include senior BJP leaders Awadhesh Nayak, a former RSS functionary from Datia, and Rajkumar Dhanora. Dhanora, a party leader from Surkhi reportedly alleged being targeted by state transport minister Govind Rajput.
On its part, the Congress is leaving no stone unturned to shore up its electoral prospects. It even inducted former Chambal bandit Malkhan Singh and mountaineer Megha Parmar — who was earlier the face of the ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ (save the girl child, educate the girl child) campaign in MP — into the party to give its campaign momentum.
Parmer comes from Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s home district of Sehore.
Two other high-profile entries into the Congress were that of poetess Anjum Rehbar — wife of renowned Urdu poet late Rahat Indori — who was earlier with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and joined the Congress in Indore last month, and Vikram Mastal, who played Lord Hanuman in Ramanand Sagar’s TV adaptation of the Ramayana, and was inducted into the party in July by Kamal Nath at a Hanuman temple built by the latter in Chhindwara.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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