The BJP is facing turbulence in at least two Lok Sabha seats where influential BJP insiders, an MLA and a sitting MP have thrown in their lot, angry with the BJP high command’s choice of the person to contest from the seat.
Darjeeling
In West Bengal’s Darjeeling Lok Sabha constituency, the Kurseong BJP MLA, B.P. Sharma (aka Bajgain), has declared he will file his nomination and pitch in to contest against the BJP candidate, sitting MP Raju Bista.
He has said he is doing this as “I had said earlier that I would contest the election if an outsider was given a ticket by the party,” The Telegraph quoted him as saying on Friday (March 29).
Bajgain defines sitting BJP MP Raju Bista as an “outsider”. He cites his native place as the state of Manipur, saying it is only his in-laws who hail from the Darjeeling district.
The Telegraph reports that Bajgain had met Bimal Gurung of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha in Darjeeling recently “and attended a meeting convened by the Morcha and other like-minded organisations”.
Bajgain directly claimed he was hopeful of his support as he was committed to the Gorkhaland demand.
“During my meeting with Bimal Gurung, daju told me that in 2020, he had said while he was supporting the Trinamool Congress in 2021 (in the Bengal Assembly elections), he would, however, back someone who highlighted the Gorkhaland cause in the 2024 (general) election,” Bajgain is cited as saying.
He also said, “Parliament was the appropriate place to raise the issue rather than the assembly”, explaining why he was insisting on running.
#TheWireTake: The BJP, despite having made vague promises, had been mindful of the Gorkhaland sentiment in the region. This partially explains why, despite the strong buzz that IFS officer and former foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla had been expanding his outreach and was confident of beating the sitting MP to the ticket, the party thought best to not take a chance.
Shringla left no stones unturned in the drive to project “his ‘Bhumiputra’ credentials while connecting with people across Darjeeling seat”.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 9 when on a visit to Siliguri said, “The BJP has always been sensitive to the problems and challenges of Gorkha brothers and sisters. The BJP is continuously striving to address your concerns. Now we are very close to finding a solution.”
But the party is in a tough spot trying to explain what is holding up an initiative given that it has been in power for a decade and the demand for a durable political solution for the Darjeeling hills has been raised by the people of the region for a long time.
The BJP has been winning the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat since 2009.
Dhanbad
A full-fledged “row” has broken out over the BJP candidate for Dhanbad’s Lok Sabha seat.
Dhullu Mahto, who is an MLA in the Jharkhand assembly and allegedly has 49 cases against him, is facing the heat and media reports say BJP sympathiser and Dhanbad district Marwari Sammelan president Krishna Agarwal “wrote a letter on Thursday to BJP state president and MLA Babulal Marandi requesting him to ask [the party’s] central leadership to review the decision of giving it [the seat] to Mahto.”
The BJP wants to fight anti-incumbency by replacing its three-term sitting MP P.N. Singh with Dhullu Mahto.
“While claiming to speak against the mafia, the MLA [Mahto] has himself become a version of the mafia in the coal township. He has the habit of inciting one caste against another and is filled with ill habits of regionalism and caste feeling,” Agarwal alleged in his letter.
“There is deep resentment amongst our traditional voters on the selection of the candidate, who is a history-sheeter and has several cases including extortion, land grab and assaulting government officials,” a Dhanbad-based BJP leader told The Telegraph.
They continued: “We might have to face its consequences during the election result if the candidate is not changed in what is a traditional bastion of BJP.”
#TheWireTake: The BJP is under fire for being the latest umbrella for those it itself alleged were seriously corrupt. It looks like the party will accept anything, as long as it helps push them above the halfway mark of 272 in the Lok Sabha.
Their projection of Ashok Chavan and Ajit Pawar in Maharashtra, first treated and derided as mascots of ‘corruption’, as star campaigners now has appalled supporters and challenged the party’s narrative of being tough on corruption.
Amit Shah personally calling the notorious Ballari brother, Karnataka MLA G. Janardhana Reddy, an accused in a mining case not even allowed to physically campaign in Ballari, to help the BJP’s prospects is not helping an anti-corruption campaign.
Reddy has not only joined the saffron party but has merged his party with the BJP.
Then there were revelations about one of the approvers in the Delhi excise scam, a businessman named Sarath Chandra Reddy, whose company was discovered to have donated Rs 5 crore to the BJP less than a week after the ED arrested him in the case.
His company donated Rs 25 crore to the BJP some months after he turned approver in the case.
Another approver in the case from the so-called ‘South Lobby’ is Raghava Magunta Reddy, whose father Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy secured a ticket from the BJP-TDP-Jana Sena alliance in Andhra Pradesh, casting deep doubts about the BJP’s projection on the corruption front.
Doesn’t bode well for the world’s richest party to be seen as the refuge for all manner of accused.
