BHOPAL: The big political upset in Madhya Pradesh, which saw veteran OBC politician and forest minister Ramniwas Rawat lose the assembly polls from his bastion Vijaypur seat, has turned out to be a sweet revenge for former BJP MLA Satyapal Singh ‘Nitu’ Sikarwar.
According to political watchers in the Sheopur district of the Gwalior-Chambal region, which houses the Vijaypur seat, it was the former BJP man Mukesh Malhotra, who as Congress candidate, defeated the first-time BJP candidate Ramniwas Rawat. But the script of the entire poll upset was meticulously drawn by former BJP MLA from the neighbouring Morena district, Nitu Sikarwar.
Nitu is the son of a powerful former BJP politician, Gajraj Singh Sikarwar, who won the Sumawali seat of Morena district twice in the past. Later, as a BJP MLA, Nitu represented the same assembly seat between 2013 and 2018. Nitu’s elder brother, Satish Sikarwar, is a Congress MLA in Gwalior, while sister-in-law Shobha Sikarwar is the mayor.
After Satish’s victory in the 2023 polls from Gwalior district and sister-in-law’s Gwalior mayor poll win, Nitu (expelled from BJP in November 2020) contested from Morena LS seat as Congress candidate against Assembly Speaker Narendra Singh Tomar’s loyalist Shiv Mangal Tomar.