‘Bikau vs Tikau’: Congress to target ‘turncoat’ for Nov bypoll campaign

Bhopal: In Vijaypur, the Congress will question the very intention of minister for forests Ram Niwas Rawat while campaigning for the bypoll on 13 Nov. An election committee is currently in the constituency searching for a suitable candidate who can contest against the BJP.It is almost certain that the BJP will field Congress' former minister and turncoat Ram Niwas Rawat there.State Congress media department chief and former minister Mukesh Nayak said, "Our party will announce the name of the candidates from Vijaypur and Budhni within the next five to ten days. In Vijaypur, the main slogan will be Bikau aur Tikau (turncoat versus the loyal Congress worker). We will ask the people of the constituency why this bypoll is taking place after a year of the assembly elections. Why is the Congress candidate they elected in Nov last year now contesting as the BJP's candidate?"Mukesh Nayak claimed that the Congress will go all out to embarrass Ram Niwas Rawat, a former minister of the Digvijaya Singh govt and six-time MLA on a Congress ticket, for betraying the party and joining the BJP "just to become a minister"."How will Ram Niwas Rawat go to the people of the constituency that elected him as a Congress candidate six times and ask them to vote for the BJP this time? It would be embarrassing for anyone to say that I have changed my election symbol, party, and ideology just to become a minister," Nayak said.Ram Niwas Rawat, who quit the Congress on 30 April, is now the minister for forests and environment in the Mohan Yadav govt. Mukesh Nayak said that the Congress candidate will be tested and tried on the loyalty scale before he is given the ticket for the Vijaypur assembly seat bypoll. "The burnt child fears the fire," he said, recalling how the Congress's LS candidate, Akshay Bam, quit the party and left it without a candidate in Indore constituency.In Budhni, the Congress claims it has found a "good" candidate who can give a hard contest to the BJP. "Former Union minister Arun Yadav has been made in-charge of the constituency, and we have a good candidate there."When party office-bearers were asked if actor Vikram Mastal, who played Lord Hanuman in a television serial and contested the 2023 assembly election against former CM Chouhan, will be fielded again, they said it was "very unlikely". Every successive election since the 2006 bypoll, the Congress has fielded a fresh face in Budhni. This time too, the party could field a fresh face again.