BHOPAL: Not one but nine leaders from different parties, including a sitting BJP MLA, joined Congress in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh on Saturday. They joined the opposition in the presence of Kamal Nath and party’s national general secretary in-charge MP Randeep Singh Surjewala, among others.
Out of the nine leaders, three belonged to the core BJP family. Among them is Bhanwar Singh Shekhwat, who won two assembly polls from Indore-5 and Badnawar (Dhar) in 1993 and 2013, respectively, but lost from Badnawar in 2018 to Jyotiraditya Scindia-loyalist Rajvardhan Singh Dattigaon who is now a minister in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government.
BJP leader from Bhopal Ashish Agrawal ‘Golu,’ who is the nephew of former Madhya Pradesh minister and senior BJP leader Umashankar Gupta, joined the switched sides. Among other BJP leaders, father-son duo Chedilal Pandey and Shivam Pandey from Katni district also joined the Congress.
Sitting BJP MLA from Kolaras (Shivpuri) Virendra Raghuvanshi who quit BJP on Thursday, former Congress MLA’s Devendra Singh Raghuvanshi’s daughter Anshu Raguvanshi and another leader Arvind Dhakad — both from Gwalior-Chambal region joined BJP along with Jyotiradhitya Scindia in 2020 — returned to their parent party. Another important inclusion in the Congress was Chandrabhushan Singh Bundela ‘Guddu Raja,’ who is the son of Sujan Singh Bundela, two-times former Congress MP from Jhansi.
Former MLA Shekhawat was upset with the BJP ever since he was denied the ticket to contest Badnawar assembly by-poll in 2020. There are reliable reports that the ruling party is not considering him from any seat of Indore and Dhar districts in the polls. Often credited for bringing BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya into electoral politics of Indore in the 1980s, Shekhawat accused the BJP of wavering away from its original principles since Jyotiraditya Scindia joined it with his loyalist MLAs.
“Those who were defeated by me were purchased for Rs 35 crore. All those leaders, who nurtured the party from its inception and helped it grow into a tree, are presently being sidelined in BJP, owing to rampant corruption by Scindia loyalists,” he said.