BHOPAL: Hours before counting of votes for the July 30 Datia Assembly by-election was set to begin, the Congress on Sunday night suspended its disqualified MLA Rajendra Bharti, from the party.
The late-night action by the All India Congress Committee (AICC) came two days after the party's candidate in the by-election, Kunwar Ghanshyam Singh, accused Bharti of working with the ruling BJP to sabotage the Congress's electoral prospects.
According to an AICC order, Bharti, a three-time former Datia MLA, has been suspended from the party's primary membership with immediate effect.
Bharti's suspension comes months after his disqualification as Datia MLA following his conviction in a bank fraud case, which necessitated the July 30 by-election in the Datia Assembly constituency.
On Friday, Congress candidate and two-time former MLA Kunwar Ghanshyam Singh alleged that Bharti had worked against him during the campaign in collusion with the BJP.
Singh claimed that Bharti had received financial support from the BJP to undermine the Congress in the by-election.
Rejecting the allegations, Bharti accused Ghanshyam Singh of colluding with three-time former BJP MLA and ex-home minister Narottam Mishra. Bharti alleged that Singh had aligned with Mishra despite knowing that the former minister had, in the past, orchestrated atrocities and false cases against Congress workers in Datia district.
The July 30 by-election recorded a voter turnout of 71.44%, around nine percentage points lower than the turnout in the 2023 Assembly election in the constituency.
The contest is widely seen as a three-cornered fight between the BJP's first-time candidate Ashutosh Tiwari, Congress nominee Kunwar Ghanshyam Singh, and Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) candidate Damodar Singh Yadav.
Political observers in Datia believe that both the BJP and the Congress may have faced internal sabotage during the by-election. They say the outcome could ultimately depend on which party suffered greater damage from dissent within its own ranks.