Two time BJP MLA Prahlad Gunjal joins Cong, may be fielded against Om Birla from Kota
Two time BJP MLA Prahlad Gunjal, who hails from the Gujjar community, was first elected to the Assembly in 2003 as a BJP candidate from Ramganj Mandi in Kota
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Prahlad Gunjal, Congress. (Express Photo by Rohit Jain Paras)Former BJP MLA Prahlad Gunjal joined the Congress party in Jaipur on Thursday stating that he cannot compromise with khuddari (self-respect).
Considered close to former CM Vasundhara Raje, the outspoken Gunjal said he has been associated with the BJP for about four decades, starting out with student politics, but now, it feels “like the voice of the common man is being crushed and this is becoming a challenge to the democracy.”
Addressing a press conference after joining the Congress in the presence of former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, party state president Govind Singh Dotasra and several MLAs, among others, Gunjal said, “When I first became an MLA, the current CM was in the race to be a sarpanch and the current BJP state president used to be a panchayat samiti member.”
On his joining Congress and on the politicians joining the BJP, he said, “Only the dead fish go with the flow of the current, the ones who are alive swim against it.”
Along with Gunjal, Congress rebels Sunil Parihar, Naresh Meena and Fateh Khan, who had contested the 2023 polls from Siwana, Chhabra and Sheo, respectively, also returned to the party fold. On each of these three seats the vote share of these rebels, along with that of the Congress candidate, was more than that of the BJP’s winning candidate.
Earlier in the day, he left from Kota with a massive cavalcade in a show of strength. While BJP has repeated sitting MP and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla from Kota, the Congress is expected to field Gunjal against him.
In a veiled attack at Birla, he said that BJP’s politics in Kota is dominated by just one person and his family and that a BJP worker has to bow before “bade bhaisaheb and chhote bhaisaheb.”
“I did not come into politics to be someone’s ghulam (subservient to someone) or to lay down the carpets for some leader,” he said, contrasting the politics of khareedari (buying/horse trading) with khuddari (self-respect) and how he can’t compromise with the latter.
He said that when principles and the party become zero and there is only glorification of one person, then the ideology, life values, sanskar, and policy are just reduced to being a media propaganda.
On the occasion, Dotasra termed Gunjal as a damdaar (powerful) politician who “has an identity not just in Kota division but across the state.”
Gunjal, who hails from the Gujjar community, was first elected to the Assembly in 2003 as a BJP candidate from Ramganj Mandi in Kota. That was also the year Raje became a CM for the first time. However, following the violent 2007-08 Gujjar reservation where scores of Gujjars were killed in police firing, Gunjal had rebelled against the Raje-led government and was expelled.
He then contested as a Loktantrik Samajwadi Party candidate from Hindoli in Bundi in 2008 but lost. By 2013, he was back in BJP and contested from Kota North as a BJP candidate, winning this seat. However, he lost from this seat in the next two elections – in 2018 and 2023 – to Congress veteran Shanti Dhariwal.
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