Congress' Indore Debacle Shows Top BJP Leaders' Internal Struggle for Attention

In the BJP’s MP unit, a power tussle had begun even before the state Assembly elections were won in 2023.

On Monday, 29 April, in a repeat of what happened in Surat, the Congress Lok Sabha candidate from Indore, Akshay Kantilal Bam, retracted his nomination, adding to the list of walkovers being handed to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 elections.

Before the events in Indore, VD Sharma, president of the BJP’s MP unit, faced an empty field in the Khajuraho Lok Sabha seat due to the nomination of the Samajwadi Party candidate Meera Yadav being cancelled on technical grounds.

What sets these events apart is the underlying reasons behind them:

• The unsuccessful attempt at changing generational leadership in the MP Congress

• The struggle of BJP stalwarts for prominence in the state

Problems With Congress' New MP Party Chief?

Senior state leaders point towards the lack of acceptance of the generational shift in the Congress' leadership within the party ranks after Kamal Nath.

Talking to The Quint, Aminul Khan Suri, a Congress leader from Indore, said that the ticket distribution, particularly in Indore, did not follow anybody's recommendations but rather the wishes of the party president.

“Apart from the fact that Bam wasn't a devout Congress worker, the party wanted Jitu Patwari to contest from Indore. He is the party president, a well-known young leader, and has a massive sway in the Malwa region, but the party’s wishes were not followed. Instead, a close associate of Patwari was fielded at his behest – and look where we have landed. Akshay Bam has retracted his nomination, and the BJP has been given a virtual walkover,” he said.

"Had he contested, the results would have been very different, and the party wouldn't have faced this disgrace," he added.

Meanwhile, Jitu Patwari alleged that Bam was “intimidated, threatened and tortured” by the BJP. He further claimed that this was an act of dictatorship. But the fact that Bam was seen campaigning on the previous night as well as had talked to a few Congress workers in the morning before his photo with BJP stalwart Kailash Vijayvargiya went viral raises questions about the communication gap within the party.

A source alleged to The Quint that Akshay Bam was pressured by the BJP, but his calls for rescue and relief went unnoticed within his party.

However, a party insider said the party president and his close aides were unaware of Bam's retraction. This was despite attempts by the BJP to cancel Bam's nomination a week ago due to the alleged non-disclosure of a serious case against him in his election affidavit.

Bam had declared three ongoing legal matters against him, of which two are land disputes, and the third pertains to reckless driving. On 24 April, coinciding with Bam's candidacy submission, a local court levied accusations against him and his father under Section 307 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for attempted murder in connection with one of the land dispute cases. Section 307 carries a potential prison term of 10 years upon conviction.

The legal cell of the BJP in Indore had accused Bam of not disclosing the case details, but the claims were turned down by poll officials, citing that the charges were levied on the day that the nomination papers were filed.

Besides the switch hit by Akshay Bam, several former MLAs like Sanjay Shukla who had represented the Indore-1 seat in the state Assembly; Vishal Patel who is the former Congress MLA from Depalpur; and Antar Singh Darbar, a former MLA from Mhow seat, left the Congress party last month.

Political corridors are rife with speculations about Patwari being "tossed a pie bigger than his appetite". But, while the Congress grapples with the diminishing unity within its MP unit, the BJP is dealing with a lot of fizz within the camp, too.

A BJP Leader's Struggle to Be in the Limelight

The BJP’s central leadership support to three-time legislator Mohan Yadav as the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh did not go down well with the likes of former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, central ministers like Prahlad Patel, and the BJP’s general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya.

The recent events in Indore, akin to those in Surat and Khajuraho before, indicate an internal struggle for prominence.

A senior BJP functionary said, “It’s chest-thumping by some top leaders to prove themselves to the central leadership. There wasn't a serious need for a repeat of Surat in Indore but making it possible will score some points for some leaders in an election where everybody wants to be in the limelight.”

In the BJP’s MP unit, the power tussle had begun even before the state Assembly elections in 2023 when Chouhan did not get the backing of the central leadership, and instead, the focus of the campaign was on ‘collective leadership’ under the umbrella of ‘Modi ki Guarantee’.

To dampen Chouhan’s rising popularity after he launched the Ladli Behna Yojana (a cash scheme providing Rs 1,000 per month to female voters), several of the central ministers, MPs, and the party’s general secretary, were fielded in the state elections.

The party won by a surprising margin, securing 163 seats, further giving command in the state to the central leadership duo of Narendra Modi-Amit Shah, who then sided with Mohan Yadav, unsettling the senior cadre.

A senior journalist covering the BJP for over a decade said that the party's central line of leaders who were sent to the states are still trying to get hold of the bigger pie. “Central leaders like Kailash Vijayvargiya and VD Sharma are still trying to pave ways for themselves if Yadav is replaced as chief minister after the general elections. They were sent to the little leagues by their party, and now they are trying to get their hands on the biggest pie,” the journalist remarked.

Another journalist from the state added that "Vijayvargiya would otherwise have had nothing in his report card in the ongoing elections."

“What would have been Kailash Vijayvargiya's response to any question about his role and achievement in the general elections of 2024? Now his answer could be that he got the Congress candidate to retract his nomination – and that’s what ensured a repeat of Surat in Indore”.

(Vishnukant Tiwari is a journalist covering Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh among other central Indian regions. He covers Maoism, politics, caste, atrocities, communalism, minorities and other important developments.)