New Delhi: Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharti created a stir Sunday as she hurled a brick at alcohol bottles inside a liquor store in Bhopal’s Azad Nagar locality — a move that BJP leaders say smacks of her “frustration at being sidelined in state politics”.
Bharti explained her action in a letter to CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan Monday, saying that it was meant to protect the “honour” of women, and sought to remind him to implement a liquor ban in the state.
“At the request of women from the Barkheda Pathani area of the city, I went to meet them. They told me that in the vicinity of a liquor shop, there is a labourer colony which has schools and temples,” she wrote in Hindi. “These women have been agitating for the last three years to get the liquor shop closed, but in vain.”
“The administration had given them assurances several times, but nothing happened, so I assured them I would take up the issue with the government. Some of the women, with tears in their eyes, told me that men, after drinking liquor, relieve themselves in the open at the back of the shop. This is very embarrassing for women and girls residing in the colony,” Bharti explained in her letter.
At that point, she wrote, “I asked those near the shop to move aside”. “[I] picked up a stone and threw it with full force to damage the liquor bottles in protest,” she said. Bharti has asked the administration to shut down the shop in a week.
The former Union minister has for long been agitating for prohibition in MP — an issue that, sources said, she knows will find resonance with women voters and one that can possibly help her corner Chouhan and make a comeback in state politics.
A senior Madhya Pradesh BJP leader told ThePrint: “She has announced that she would like to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. It will be the high-command’s call to give her a ticket.”
Speaking to ThePrint, Bharti said it is the duty of the state government to enforce a strict bar on liquor shops near schools, colleges and temples. “My job is to create awareness, which I am doing,” she added.
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Bharti’s anti-liquor campaign
It was in 2018 that Bharti had announced that she was taking a break from electoral politics for three years.
Close to the end of her sabbatical and apparently struggling to find a window to enter state politics, Bharti took up the prohibition issue in January 2021, soon after at least 20 people died after drinking illicit liquor in MP’s Morena district.
She made a public appeal to BJP president J.P. Nadda the same month, demanding a ban on liquor in all BJP-ruled states. She cited the examples of Gujarat, and also Bihar, where women are believed to have voted in support of CM Nitish Kumar due to the liquor ban imposed in 2016.
Bharti went on to announce an anti-liquor agitation on 8 March that year, but didn’t follow through with it, citing the second Covid wave as the reason. Sources, however, said she didn’t find any takers for her call and her counsellors told her that the time was not ripe for the movement.
In the last six months, Bharti has stepped up her campaign, giving CM Chouhan, in September 2021, the deadline of January 2022 to implement prohibition.
She warned him that she would “hit the streets with a stick” unless the ban was imposed, and also announced that she would launch protests outside alcohol shops.
On Thursday last week, she met the CM, demanding that the state should immediately close down alcohol shops operating in prohibited areas in violation of rules. According to government rules, liquor shops are not allowed near schools and places of worship.
Last week, she also visited Tarawali mandir in Bhopal, near which a liquor shop is situated, and asked people whether it should continue. She told reporters that she would travel the state and check how many shops were operating in prohibited areas.
In her letter to Chouhan Monday, Bharti said that “one-and-a-half-year ago, I had discussions with you and state president B.D. Sharma, which were positive, on starting a movement against liquor”.
“Your suggestion was to start an awareness campaign in which the state government would support a social movement for prohibition. Now, people are taking an initiative and the government should support them to implement prohibition,” she said.
Message to BJP leadership
Bharti’s thrust on prohibition comes just ahead of the MP polls due next year.
Since her hiatus, which she announced ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Bharti is said to have been facing marginalisation in her state and in the BJP, while she is also looking to fight the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
A firebrand leader, Bharti has been associated with the BJP since her 20s, and bolstered her position in the party with her involvement in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.
She was the water resources minister in the first Modi government and was appointed a BJP national vice-president ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. But in 2020, she was dropped from the post. She was also not visible in the party’s poll campaigns for five states this year.
A BJP leader pointed out that a “lot has changed” in Madhya Pradesh politics over the last few years.
“(Civil aviation minister) Jyotiraditya Scindia is now the new power centre and Shivraj Singh Chouhan has cultivated a good chemistry with Scindia to keep other contenders at a distance,” the leader said. “Even (Union home minister) Amit Shah’s men — Kailash Vijayvargiya and Narottam Mishra — didn’t get a chair at the time (of CM selection) due to Shivraj-Scindia chemistry,” the leader added.
“Uma has no such chemistry with Amit Shah in Delhi, and it is very unlikely that she will find a place in state politics,” he added.
The state BJP leader mentioned earlier also explained the need to sideline Bharti for “fear of creating another power centre”.
“Last time, she won from Jhansi (in Uttar Pradesh). It could be an option for her but (CM) Yogi Adityanath will hesitate to field her from there over fears of creating another power centre,” the leader said. “She wants to contest from Bhopal or Khajuraho from where she contested earlier, but that is something which Shivraj would not like.”
Other BJP sources said Bharti was last year also hopeful of a Rajya Sabha seat, which got vacated after Thawar Chand Gehlot resigned in July, but the BJP high-command decided to give it to L. Murugan, who was inducted in the Union government as a Minister of State.
“Moreover, giving her a Rajya Sabha seat was not an option since she is a mass leader,” a source said.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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