BHOPAL: Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra seems to have run into a controversy, days before its arrival in the BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh on November 20. The party is in the midst of a row after independent MLA Surendra Singh ‘Shera’ was given the charge of coordinating the arrangements of Rahul’s march in Burhanpur and Khandwa districts.
The decision was taken by the Kamal Nath-led state Congress a week after the ex-chief of the state Congress and former Union minister, Arun Yadav, was given the same responsibility.The ruling BJP has targeted the Congress over the issue, with senior leaders, including Home Minister Narottam Mishra and state BJP secretary Rahul Kothari calling it a move against the OBC Yadav community. When asked about the decision, Nath told the media, “It was Arun Yadav who proposed Shera’s name for the task. Shera might be an independent MLA on record, but his heart and soul is with the Congress.”
Trying to play down the issue, a state Congress leader in Bhopal said that Yadav himself wasn’t comfortable with managing the rally while Shera has all the resources to make it successful. Yadav, a powerful OBC leader, is the son of ex-deputy chief minister Subhash Yadav, while Shera hails from a politically powerful Thakur family, whose members have earlier represented the Khandwa-Burhanpur Lok Sabha seat and the Burhanpur Assembly seat on Congress tickets. Shera had won the 2018 Vidhan Sabha poll from Burhanpur seat as an independent after the Congress denied him a ticket, instead choosing a supporter of Arun Yadav, who finished third in the contest.
In the 2021 Khandwa Lok Sabha bye-election, Shera lobbied for a Congress ticket for his wife, but failed. Yadav, an ex-MP from the same seat, was also not given the ticket, and claimed that he was unwilling to be in the fray. With the latest development, political watchers feel that Shera or someone from his family will be fielded by the Congress from Burhanpur in the Assembly polls.