Barring three seats that fell vacant due to the death of incumbent MLAs, the electoral exercise on November 3 will be due defections engineered by BJP in March to topple the Kamal Nath Government. But BJP which was gloating over the “big catch” Jyotiraditya Scindia and his 22-member flock, is now worried about the lasting damage it may have caused itself in the Gwalior-Chambal region, where byelections are being held for 16 seats.
The party would never admit it but its leaders privately concede they feel like spiders caught in their own web.
BJP is also finding it difficult to explain its conduct in March. The then health minister Tulsiram Silawat in the Congress Government disappeared in the middle of March and surfaced in a Bengaluru hotel huddled with other defectors. Deserting the ship when he should have been at the forefront of the war against the pandemic is being held against both Silawat and the BJP. Sanwer in Indore, the area Silawat represented in the assembly, is among the worst affected in the state.
Silawat who has been winning the seat for the Congress for many terms is now struggling to save Sanwer and his own political future. Jyotiraditya Scindia was insisting on making Silawat the deputy chief minister in Kamal Nath ministry and subsequently in the Chouhan Ministry too. State BJP leaders are now keen to ensure his defeat. The seizure of Rs 51 lakh near Sanwer from a man claiming to be a BJP worker has added to the stink around BJP as the man failed to satisfactorily account for the cash.
BJP has been downplaying the intra-party differences since the arrival of Scindia and his band of defectors. The resentment has been so widespread that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had to make three trips to Bhopal to placate the Sangh cadre.
After wresting power in the state BJP has tried to use its unending battle against the coronavirus to hide administrative failures. Shivraj Chouhan, the first chief minister to test positive, was treated in a private hospital. He was criticized for patronizing a private facility when the government was pumping massive money to treat patients in government hospitals.
