‘All eyes will be on whether Scindia gets a good number of seats from Gwalior’.
New Delhi: The result of the Assembly by-elections for 24 seats in Madhya Pradesh, the date for which has still not been announced, is going to be a do or die issue, politically, for BJP’s latest entrant Jyotiraditya Scindia. Out of these 24 seats, the BJP needs to win at least 9 seats to reach the majority of 116 members in the 230-member Madhya Pradesh Assembly. The party presently has 107 MLAs, while the Congress has 92 MLAs and it will have to win on all the 24 seats to form the government in Madhya Pradesh, again. Out of these 24 seats, 16 are located in the Gwalior region, which is considered as “Scindia’s belt”.
Bypolls in the 24 seats were necessitated due to the resignation of 22 Congress MLAs, all from the Scindia camp, and the demise of two more MLAs. Ordinarily, the bypolls should be held within six months of the seats falling vacant and by that norm, the election process should be completed before 10 September as the ex-Congress MLAs had resigned from their seats on 10 March.
A BJP national functionary told The Sunday Guardian: “The question is not whether BJP will regain power or not, but whether Scindia will be able to secure a good number of seats for the BJP from the Gwalior region or not and prove his worth. If he is unable to do so, he will be ‘parked’ in the loop-line in the BJP, like many other ‘top’ leaders who have joined from the Congress in recent times. There are many proverbial ‘thorns in the garden’ for Scindia right now. Top state BJP leaders want Scindia’s men to get as few tickets as possible, and none of them want Scindia’s candidates to do well in the by-elections. It is because of these reasons that Shivraj (CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan) first found it difficult to expand his Cabinet and now he is finding it hard to shortlist candidates for the bypolls. In almost all the seats, the BJP, if it goes by Scindia’s wishes, will have to ignore the claims of old BJP workers and leaders and give tickets to former Congress leaders (who have now joined the BJP). And if that happens, the chance of internal sabotage being done by the BJP leaders and workers to ensure that Scindia’s candidates lose, is very strong.”
According to him, the BJP leadership, including Chouhan and state president V.D. Sharma, are trying to limit the number of Scindia’s men getting tickets to 12-14.
“One has to keep in mind that we will be ignoring our loyal soldiers and commanders while adjusting Scindia’s men. And we need to strike a balance to make sure that our original party workers and leaders do not get too upset,” he added.
According to him, there was hardly any space in state BJP for a “high profile” leader like Scindia as the state already has leaders like Shivraj Chouhan, Narendra Singh Tomar, Prabhat Jha, Kailash Vijayvargiya and Narottam Mishra, to name a few.
“All these leaders have given decades of their life to make space for themselves in the state BJP and now they will not accept an outsider like Scindia to take a major portion out of it. The problems for Scindia are many,” a senior Bhopal-based journalist said.
Even top Congress leaders, including former Chief Minister Kamal Nath, are focusing on derailing the political career of Scindia, whom they accuse of back-stabbing and taking away the fruits of their 15-year-old labour within 15 months.
“The Congress workers and leaders are very unhappy with Scindia, as they should be. We were out of power for 15 years and when we regained it, Scindia ensured that it did not last beyond 15 months. Our own internal feuds have been pushed into the background and all of us are working with a single agenda to teach a lesson to Scindia. We might not be able to regain power, but at least we will ensure that Scindia’s political career is finished,” a Congress leader said.
It is with this focus that the Congress has inducted “new” faces into the party in recent days and also roped in election strategist Prashant Kishor for the bypolls.
To dent the chances of Scindia’s candidates in the 16 Gwalior-based seats, Kamal Nath inducted Balendu Shukla, who was close to Jyotiraditya’s father Madhavrao, into the Congress last week. Shukla, who is a former MLA from Gwalior and three-term Congress minister, rejoined the Congress fold after 11 years. He was a classmate of Madhav Rao Scindia in Scindia School, Gwalior, and was known as his “Bal Sakha” (childhood friend).
“Shukla has a small yet loyal following among the people of Gwalior because of his personal nature and in close battles, his presence will make a difference in the 16 seats that are based in this region. The Congress is working with a clear intent to make Scindia ‘pay’ for what he did,” a Gwalior-based journalist said.