Lok Sabha elections: BJP insulted Sumitra Mahajan, says Congress

BHOPAL:

Lok Sabha

Speaker and Indore MP Sumitra Mahajan’s open letter to media, refusing to contest Lok Sabha polls took both BJP and Congress by surprise on Friday.

In earlier Lok Sabha elections, Sumitra Mahajan’s name as the candidate for Indore seat would always be on the first list. This time, two lists have been released but without Indore.

PCC media committee chairperson Shobha Oza said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah have put all senior party leaders, including L K Advani and

Murli Manohar Joshi

“in cold storage”. “the treatment meted out to Sumitra Mahajan is no different. It is not only an insult to Mahajan, but of the entire population of Indore, who voted for her for so long. I condemn it in the strongest words,” she added.

Expressing “sympathy” with the Lok Sabha Speaker, media coordinator for PCC chief Kamal Nath, Narendra Saluja, said: “It would have been far more graceful for a respected politician like Sumitra Mahajan had she, too, gauged the minds of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah and declined to contest election, the same way Union ministers Sushma Swaraj and Uma Bharti did.”

Stating that this would have saved her from “political insult”, Saluja said the people of Indore, who voted her to Lok Sabha eight times, expected a graceful exit for Mahajan but “BJP didn’t meet their expectation”.

“Sumitra Mahajan had said that the key of Indore was safe in her hands and she would hand it over to an able successor but she was not given that chance, either. When Tai realized that key would be snatched, she wrote to BJP president Amit Shah but in place of talking to him, she sent copies of the letter to media houses in an attempt to save her political honour and reach out to people with her pain over insult by party leadership,” he remarked, adding: “BJP has insulted Tai and sympathies of Congress lie with her.”

BJP state spokesperson Rajneesh Agrawal said, “Sumitra Mahajan is our senior party leader and any decision would be taken only after consent.” By this, party leaders meant she will have a say in the decision on finalising the candidate for Indore. State BJP leaders parried the question on why she had to release the letter in the media and announce she would not contest LS polls.

Sumitra Mahajan did not say anything against the party while addressing the media after her letter and said she will work for the candidate finalised by her party.

The names of Indore mayor and MLA Malini Gaud, legislator Usha Thakur, BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, former MLA Bhanwar Singh Shekawat and Indore Development Authority's former chairman Shanker Lalwani are doing the rounds as possible BJP candidates from the constituency.

BJP has declared 18 candidates from MP so far while Congress has declared 22 candidates of the total 29 LS seats. Both the parties have not declared candidate on Indore seat yet.