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Journalism of Courage
Barely three months before the Rajasthan Assembly polls, BJP veteran and former Speaker Kailash Meghwal has stirred up state politics by calling Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal “corrupt number one” and saying that he will write to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to seek Arjun’s removal from the Union ministry until the disposal of alleged corruption cases against him.
In recent years, Kailash Meghwal, 89, has made several moves deviating from the official party line. In 2019, as the then outgoing Speaker, he had accused the newly-formed Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government of allegedly ignoring rules while summoning the inaugural session of the 15th state Assembly, saying that he would not be part of such a move. Despite his objections however, the Raj Bhawan announced the schedule for the session.
In January 2020, as the BJP MLAs boycotted the Governor’s address in the Assembly, Meghwal kept sitting in the House. Later, he reportedly got into an argument with the then Leader of Opposition (LoP) Gulab Chand Kataria and state party president Satish Poonia, saying that no one had supported him when he had raised an objection in 2019 against the summoning of the Assembly while bypassing the rules.
By mid-2020, as a political crisis raged in Rajasthan, Meghwal emerged as the loudest voice from the camp of ex-chief minister Vasundhara Raje. When Congress leader Sachin Pilot accused CM Gehlot of “being busy saving” Raje and cited how she was still living in a government bungalow despite a High Court order against it, Meghwal and another BJP MLA Pratap Singh Singhvi said, “The bungalow is allotted to her in the capacity of a senior MLA. The bungalows of this category are allotted by various governments to various senior MLAs”.
In another statement then, Meghwal termed his party’s alleged attempt to topple the Gehlot government by indulging in horse trading as “unfortunate”, charging that the conspiracy by a section of the ruling party and the Opposition to bring down the government has never been witnessed in the state.
A few months later, in February 2021, he attacked the BJP Legislature Party leadership and joined about 20 other party MLAs in writing to Poonia, alleging that several senior party MLAs were being ignored. A month later, the BJP appointed Jogeshwar Garg as the Whip in the Assembly.
In May this year, CM Gehlot praised Raje, Meghwal and MLA Shobharani Kushwah (expelled by the BJP in June 2022 for cross voting in the Rajya Sabha polls) for saving his government by not supporting the attempt to topple it. Later, Gehlot clarified that Raje and Meghwal did not save his government but that they merely “gave their view that we have not had a tradition of horse trading to topple the government”.
In a political career spanning six decades, Meghwal, a Dalit leader, has been the Union minister of state, BJP national vice-president, three-time Lok Sabha MP, and six-term MLA.
He was initially associated with the Praja Socialist Party in the early 1960s before joining the Bharatiya Jana Sangh by the end of the decade, and then the Janata Party.
Meghwal had also been lodged in jail for about 19 months between 1975 and 1977, under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) during the Emergency.
He first became an MLA in 1977 from Rajsamand on the Janata Party ticket. He held the portfolio of a minister of state for ten departments for about eight months during 1977-78 before being elevated as the cabinet minister in charge of four departments.
When the Janata Party split in 1980 paving the way for the formation of the BJP, he contested as the BJP candidate from the Ajmer East Assembly seat in 1980 and won. In 1989, he became the MP from Jalore but returned to the Assembly in November 1991 by winning the Niwai seat bypoll in Tonk. In 1993, he won from the Shahpura Assembly seat, which he lost to Devilal Bairwa of the Congress in 1998.
In 2001, Meghwal moved to the Centre again after defeating Rajasthan minister Banwari Lal Bairwa in a Lok Sabha bypoll. During 2003-2004, he was the Union MoS for Social Justice and Empowerment in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee ministry. In 2004, he was re-elected to the Lok Sabha from Tonk.
In 2013, he returned to the Rajasthan Assembly as an MLA from Shahpura. He was initially named a minister in the Raje Cabinet for about a month before being elected as the Assembly Speaker in January 2014. He retained the seat in the 2018 Assembly elections.
Some BJP leaders say that behind Meghwal’s attack on Arjun Ram Meghwal, who was recently appointed as the head of the BJP’s manifesto committee, may be his doubts over his candidature in the upcoming elections. He accused Arjun of “interfering in politics here”.
“I will tell the BJP to send a ticket. I will not come to you in Delhi or in Jaipur. I am sitting here in my constituency,” Meghwal told a gathering in Shahpura Monday. He also said he will contest the election if the party gives him a ticket, or else he “will do what the people want him to”, indicating that he will contest the poll in any case. He has maintained in recent months that he was fit to contest the election again.
At the Shahpura event, Meghwal also heaped praises on Gehlot and Speaker C P Joshi for the works done by them in the region. “You will never hear that I lied or duped anyone… I say it as it is. I don’t lie,” he added.
