BHOPAL: Congress leaders staged a hunger strike for four hours in the heart of Bhopal on Wednesday, criticising the rejection of Congress candidate Meenakshi Natarajan's nomination papers for the June 18 biennial elections to the three seats from Madhya Pradesh.
The protest at Roshanpura Square saw the participation of all major state Congress leaders, including state party chief Jitu Patwari, leader of opposition Umang Singhar, party in-charge for the state Harish Chaudhary and former CM Digvijaya Singh.
Just a few hours before, the Returning Officer for the Rajya Sabha polls and Vidhan Sabha principal secretary Arvind Sharma declared the list of final candidates after completion of scrutiny of nomination papers.
The state Congress chief dubbed that rejection of Natrajan’s nomination papers as “murder of democracy and theft of the Rajya Sabha seat.”
He said the protest on the issue will not remain confined to the heart of Bhopal merely, but the Congress will gherao the CM’s residence also on the issue.
The MP Congress MLAs will seek time from the President of India Droupadi Murmu and meet her on Friday.
Meanwhile, charges and counter charges flew thick and fast between the ruling BJP and opposition Congress over the issue.
Continuing to target the BJP and the government over the issue, the AICC in-charge for the state, Harish Chaudhary said that despite having insufficient number of MLAs to get it’s third candidate elected, the BJP fielded a third candidate, Mahesh Kewat, eyeing cross voting by Congress MLAs.
But, after realizing that the Congress MLAs stood undivided and united behind their candidate, the BJP was forced to change it’s plan and got the Congress’s candidate’s nomination cancelled through the RO.
Echoing Tuesday’s statements of senior MP minister Kailash Vijayvargiya, state BJP chief Hemant Khandelwal claimed that the Congress candidate’s papers were rejected due to Congress insiders only.
“It’s a perfect case of Ghar Ka Bhedi Lanka Dhaye (an insider does the maximum damage). It was the Congress leaders only who wanted to get Meenakshi Natrajan’s nomination papers cancelled. Even if there would have been an electoral contest for the third seat, the BJP candidate would have been the winner.”
“From where we got the papers pertaining to the criminal complaint against Meenakshi Natrajan in Telangana, we don’t have our government in Telangana. We were getting the information from there only (within the Congress). Who was giving us the details, why should we tell,” Khandelwal said.
