BHOPAL: Call it a battle between camps or a divide separating the old from the new, but the BJP in Madhya Pradesh is certainly experiencing internal turmoil. And the first round seems to have gone in the favour of the ‘new’ BJP in Sagar district of Bundelkhand region.
Rajkumar Singh Dhanaura, the Sagar district chief of the party’s Kisan Morcha, has been removed from the organisational post and also expelled from the party for six years, apparently for a social media post published against MP Transport Minister Govind Singh Rajput.
While Dhanaura is a close relative of the state’s Urban Development Minister Bhupendra Singh (considered close to CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan), Rajput is said to be among Jyotiraditya Scindia loyalists.
Singh as well as Rajput represent separate seats in Sagar district. While Singh is an MLA from Khurai, Rajput represents the Surkhi seat. Singh has also won from Surkhi seat twice in the past.
Dhanaura had recently taken to social media platforms, demanding that a local resident and not an outsider candidate be fielded by the BJP from the Surkhi seat in the 2023 Assembly polls. The post was seen as targeting sitting MLA Govind Singh Rajput, whose village is situated in the adjoining Naryawali-SC constituency of Sagar district.
According to party insiders, the matter was communicated to higher levels in the party by Rajput, after which Dhanaura was removed as head of Kisan Morcha in Sagar, and also expelled from the party for six years. Sharing his side of the story with the media, Dhanaura broke down on Wednesday.
“I met state party president VD Sharma with folded hands and tendered my unconditional apology. But the party for which I religiously worked for the last three decades threw me out like an insect within a minute,” Dhanaura said.
When asked by journalists about why his relative and minister Bhupendra Singh didn’t come to his rescue, Dhanaura said, “Sometimes such a situation builds up, when someone, despite wanting to help, cannot actually come forward to support you. This is what happened in my case. Had he (Bhupendra Singh) fought for my cause, it would have sent the wrong message of him intervening in the Assembly constituency of Govind Singh Rajput.”
The sacked leader further alleged that old BJP leaders and workers of Surkhi Assembly constituency are being implicated in false criminal cases at the behest of those who came into the BJP from Congress along with Rajput in March 2020.
Sagar district has three Cabinet ministers in Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s government, including BJP veteran Gopal Bhargava and Bhupendra Singh (both old BJP warhorses). Rajput was among the 22 Scindia loyalist Congress MLAs who pulled down the 15-month-old Kamal Nath government in March 2020.
Meanwhile, making the best of Dhanaura’s expulsion from the BJP and the subsequent press conference held by the sacked BJP leader (whose father was with BJP since Jan Sangh days), state Congress spokesperson Narendra Saluja targeted the saffron party.
“Sacking of MP minister Bhupendra Singh’s relative Rajkumar Singh Dhanaura for opening a front against Scindia loyalist minister Govind Singh Rajput exposes how the tikaus (dependable old BJP men) are being shown the way out to appease the bikaus (saleable new BJP leaders),” Saluja said.