Madhya Pradesh: BJP leader 'elected' to Congress party post

In what comes as a discomfiting turn of events for the Madhya Pradesh Congress, a BJP leader was elected to the post of party's youth wing district secretary in the organisational polls held recently. Harshit Singhai, a former Congress leader, had switched over to the saffron party in March.

According to media reports, Singhai had filed the nomination for the election before his departure from the Congress. When Rajya Sabha MP Jyotiraditya Scindia quit Congress and joined the saffron party in March this year, he too followed suit.

An NDTV report said Singhai started receiving congratulatory messages for being elected to the post in Jabalpur north assembly constituency, on Friday. He had reportedly won the election by 12 votes.

While the Congress accused him of attempting to malign his former party by "cheap tactics" and claimed that he hadn't withdrawn his nomination for the polls, Singhai said he had filed the nomination three years ago and when he quit the Congress along with Scindia, he had asked the party to drop his name from the polls.

Singhai said when he called the party leadership again over cancellation of the nomination, he was asked to send a mail, explaining why he quit the party. He claimed that he had written to Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Kamal Nath over the issue. "This is what the Youth Congress has done across Madhya Pradesh. Those who are not in the party anymore are being elected," NDTV quoted him as saying.

The elections to the posts of MP Youth Congress were held earlier this month, and according to the party's election coordinator Maqsood Mirza, there were 1,800 nominations. "Singhai filed his nomination in March. Later, he joined BJP but he didn’t withdraw his nomination purportedly," Hindustan Times quoted Mirza as saying.