Indicating that the Bharatiya Janata Party in Madhya Pradesh is getting into serious by-poll mode, a video-conference meeting was held between state level bigwigs of the party. For the first time, the meeting was attended by Jyotiraditya Scindia, who joined the party two months ago.
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar, party state president Vishnudutt Sharma and state organizing general secretary Suhas Bhagat attended the meeting which discussed the strategy for the crucial by-polls to 24 seats in the state, sources close to the leaders told THE WEEK.
There was, however, no official confirmation on the meeting. Chief spokesman of state BJP, Deepak Vijayvargiya, said that he had no information about any such meeting related to by-elections. He said that even if a meeting of senior leaders was held, it might have been to discuss the issue of migrant workers and relief to farmers.
“By-polls are not to be held too soon and therefore there is no point in discussing elections now,” Vijayvargiya said.
Sources, however, told THE WEEK that the BJP leadership has already made a decision to give tickets to all the 22 ex-MLAs and ministers who had resigned their memberships from their respective seats and left the Congress party with Scindia in March this year to engineer the formation of the BJP government in the state. By-polls will be also held on two other seats that fell vacant due to the death of the members—one each of Congress and BJP.
By the rule of six months, by-polls should be held before September second week as 22 seats fell vacant in March second week. Two other seats had fallen vacant even earlier. BJP will have to win at least 10 seats out of the 24 to have a stable government in the state. It currently has 107 members in the 230-member house.
There had been rumours sometime back that the BJP was not willing to give tickets to all the Congress deserters. Following resentment among leaders like former minister Deepak Joshi, who had lost to Manoj Choudhary—one of the 22 dissident ex-MLAs—from Hatpipalya seat with a very narrow margin in 2018, the BJP state leadership had said that discussions will be held on party forum on distribution of tickets.
However, sources said that it is final that the central leadership will move ahead with the decision to give tickets to all the Scindia supporters, something that was part of a deal when Scindia joined the BJP with them.
The strategy for the by-polls, based on this decision, was said to have been discussed during the high-level meeting on Saturday. The BJP will have to deal with the resentment of the original cadre and leaders in Gwalior-Chambal and Malwa regions where the by-polls are scheduled when it officially announces the tickets to Scindia supporters.
Already, the state president and organizing general secretary have been holding video conferences with the leaders and workers in the 24 constituencies to discuss the by-poll strategy. But Saturday’s meeting was the first high-level strategy meeting and more important because it was the first time that Scindia attended a state-level organization meeting.
Reacting to the development, vice-president of the Congress media cell Syed Jafar said that it was ironic that the BJP was worried about the by-polls at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was at a peak in the state and the country. “But it is to be expected from a party that was busy in engineering the collapse of the smooth-running government in MP, when the COVID-19 situation was developing in the country,” Jafar said.
He added that the Congress, while undertaking its routine organizational works related or unrelated to by-polls, had its complete focus on providing maximum relief to the common people hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. “We will be ready when the time comes, but now is the time to provide succor to people,” he said.
