AFTER AN open feud with Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia for three years, ever since he moved to the BJP from the Congress, BJP Kolaras MLA Virendra Raghuwanshi quit the party on Thursday. This is the fourth senior BJP leader of the Gwalior-Chambal region, a Scindia turf, to quit over the past few days. Raghuwanshi directly attacked Scindia in his resignation letter, accusing him of “paying lip-service” on the issue of farmer loan waivers and also levelled allegations of corruption against the BJP government. While Raghuwanshi is silent on his future moves, including on whether he will join the Congress – as the other three to leave the BJP before him did – it would be a natural move. Raghuwanshi used to be with the Congress and left in 2014 over growing differences with Scindia. PTI quoted senior Congress leader and former Union minister Arun Yadav as saying that Raghuwanshi "will join the Congress on September 2”. Raghuwanshi said that while Scindia had cited the Kamal Nath-led Congress government's failure to waive farmer loans as the reason to switch sides – thus bringing down the Congress government – he had refrained from the issue after joining the BJP. "Corrupt officials are being posted in Shivpuri district and Kolaras Assembly seat, only so that they can create obstacles in my development works and harass me and my workers,” the MLA wrote. He talked about “big scams” in cooperative banks of farmers across the state, but especially Shivpuri district, “making a dent in their deposits”. Raghuwanshi said the desperate farmers were still lining up to get their deposits out, three years after the scam allegedly surfaced. “The farmers are not being paid their deposits, but the government is not taking any action,” he said, adding that he had also raised the topic in the Assembly, in vain. The MLA went on to attack the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government of similarly getting votes in the name of gaumata (the holy cow) and not doing anything on it either. Most of the cow sheds were not operational, or had not got funds in four-five months, he said. “Due to this, cows are still dying on the streets.” Raghuwanshi claimed that he had raised his “pain” with Chouhan and other top BJP leaders, “but you never paid attention”. “In the Gwalior-Chambal division, many party workers like me have been neglected by newcomers (leaders who came with Scindia),” he said, adding that BJP loyalists are paying the price for working for the party “with full devotion". Scindia supporters admitted there had been several disputes between them and Raghuwanshi's camp. However, they cited the MLA's “growing worry over not being given a ticket from Kolaras” as the trigger for his exit. The tension between the two leaders goes back to the 2013 Assembly elections, when Raghuwanshi had contested from Shivpuri on a Congress ticket against Scindia's aunt and BJP leader, Yashodhara Raje. When he lost to Raje, Raghuwanshi blamed Scindia for acting against him, said a Scindia supporter. "She (Yashodhara) was Scindia's aunt and he could not openly go against her," the loyalist argued. In the 2018 Assembly elections, the BJP fielded Raghuwanshi from Kolaras, and he won defeating the Congress's Mahendra Yadav, a Scindia supporter. The other former Congress leaders to have returned to the party from the BJP claimed to have felt “suffocated” in the BJP ranks. In their case though, their grievances were directed at the entrenched BJP leaders' treatment of them as interlopers, as they had come from the Congress.
