Former Lok Sabha Speaker and senior BJP leader Sumitra Mahajan has admitted to taking the help of Congress legislators to raise issues related to Indore when her party was in power in Madhya Pradesh, putting the BJP in an awkward position. Mahajan made the remarks on Sunday while sharing the dais with Governor Lalji Tandon and Higher Education Minister Jitu Patwari in Indore. She said as Indore’s MP she was always concerned about development of her constituency. “When it comes to development of Indore we rise above the party line. I am sharing my personal experience. If my government was there, I could not speak against it. I used to feel something should happen, someone should speak. I used to stealthily ask Jitu Bhaiyya (Congress MLA Jitu Patwari) and Tulsibhai (Congress MLA Tulsi Silawat, now health minister) to do something,’’ she said while looking at Tandon, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister and senior BJP leader. She went on to reveal that she would ask the Congress legislators to raise the matter and promise that she would later take it up with then chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Justifying her conduct, she said she did so only because she had development of Indore in mind. She said such camaraderie is Indore’s nature and every politician wants to do something good for the city. Mahajan then went on to say that Jitu Patwari has all the qualities to become her disciple. Mahajan, 76, represented Indore in Lok Sabha for three decades and was the Speaker in her last term. In April this year, she announced that she won’t contest the general elections after getting an indication from the top leadership that she may not be fielded again because she had reached a certain age limit. She later wrote an open letter, questioning the delay over naming party’s Indore candidate.
