BHOPAL: Former MP cabinet minister and Congress leader Umang Singhar on Saturday claimed that BJP Rajya Sabha member Jyotiraditya Scindia had offered him Rs 50 crores and a minister’s post seven months back for joining BJP.
Singhar, the three-time MLA from Gandhwani seat of Dhar district, had claimed this at an election rally in Badnawar constituency on Friday without naming Scindia.
When the state BJP president VD Sharma dared Singhar to reveal the name, he said it was Jyotiraditya Scindia.
“When many Congress MLAs went to Bengaluru, Scindia ji told me that I have no future in the Congress. He said if I switched over to BJP, I would get Rs 50 crores and a minister’s post for which he had already got the BJP leadership’s nod. But I politely refused the offer and told Scindiaji that we were walking on different paths and I never believed in politics of opportunism,” Singhar told journalists on Saturday.
The former minister also claimed that sensing humiliating defeat in the November 3 by-polls, the BJP has already started working on Plan B by trying to win over more Congress MLAs to save its government.
Singhar, a powerful tribal politician from the Malwa-Nimar region, was the forest minister in the erstwhile Kamal Nath-led Congress government. He is the nephew of former deputy CM Late Jamuna Devi.
While being the forest minister in the Kamal Nath government, Singhar had opened a front against ex-CM Digvijaya Singh last year, accusing the septuagenarian politician of trying to run the Congress government in the state from behind the curtain. He had also accused Singh of being hand in gloves with liquor and sand mafia.
His accusations had kicked up a political storm in the Congress last year and the entire matter had gone to the central disciplinary committee of the party.
Reacting to Singhar’s claims, state BJP leader Pankaj Chaturvedi (considered close to Scindia) described Singhar’s allegations and claims as “baseless.”
“If Singhar had evidence (of Scindia's offer) seven months back, why didn’t he come before the press at that time? Why did he wait so long to make it public? After opening a front against Digvijaya Singh last year, Singhar’s position in the Congress has suffered a major beating. Just to reposition himself as a loyal Congressman and enhance his stature in the Congress, he’s making such baseless allegations against the respectable Jyotiraditya Scindia,” said Chaturvedi.
Twentytwo Congress MLAs, 19 of whom were loyal to Scindia, had quit the Congress and Vidhan Sabha in March to join the BJP (just a few days after Scindia quit Congress and joined BJP), which ultimately triggered the fall of the 15-months-old Kamal Nath-led Congress government in March.
Out of the by-polls to total 28 assembly seats, 25 were necessitated by the switch-over of Congress MLAs to BJP, out of whom 19 are Scindia loyalists.