Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Uma Bharti has yet again expressed her displeasure against the BJP, this time on the issue of not being invited to the party’s ongoing outreach event, the Jan Aashirwad Yatras.
Speaking to journalists on Sunday, Ms. Bharti reminded the BJP about her contributions for the party and said that it should have at least completed the formality of inviting her. She also said that if [Union Minister] Jyotiraditya Scindia helped the party form a government in 2020, she had too had delivered a win in 2003.
On Monday, in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), she wrote that even if she was invited, she would not go to [any of the five] the yatras or the concluding event [in Bhopal] on September 25. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to address the Bhopal event in which all the yatras will culminate.
The former Chief Minister also contradicted a report that she had handed a list of candidates to State party president V.D. Sharma whom she wanted the BJP to field in the elections but said that he had held discussions and some of those names had also been discussed.
Speaking to a TV channel later, she said that it was the party’s Central leadership and not Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan who were responsible for not inviting her. In her posts on X (former Twitter) too she wrote that she respected Mr. Chouhan and would campaign for him.
While Ms. Bharti has targeted Mr. Chouhan and her own party in the past, two recent developments in which a relative and close aide of her was inducted in Mr. Chouhan’s cabinet while another was named as a candidate for the elections scheduled later this year.
The party insiders had acknowledged on both occasions that despite being a marginal player in the State otherwise, given her hold on the Lodhi caste voters and the Bundelkhand region, it could not antagonise her in what is expected to be a closely contested elections.
Ms. Bharti, however, wrote that she would never harm the party as she was one of those who had nurtured it with “blood and sweat”.
