From BJP sidelines, Uma Bharti eyes prohibition for comeback in MP politics

1) बरखेड़ा पठानी आझाद नगर, बीएचईएल भोपाल , यहाँ मज़दूरों की बस्ती में शराब की दुकानों की शृंखला हैं जो की एक बड़े आहाता में लोगों को शराब परोसते हैं । pic.twitter.com/dNAXrh1jRY

— Uma Bharti (@umasribharti) March 13, 2022

The erstwhile Hindutva firebrand Bharti, who has been seeking to champion the cause of liquor ban in MP since last year, resorted to her “direct action” three days after the saffron party romped home in Assembly polls in four states including Uttar Pradesh.

Refusing to comment on her action, the state BJP distanced itself from Bharti, calling it her “personal initiative carried out in her own way”.

Some senior BJP leaders said it was nothing to do with the state unit but was rather a signal to the central party leadership.

This is the first time when the state has witnessed the demand for liquor prohibition. Bharati first advocated it in January 2021 following the deaths of 20 people in Morena after they consumed illicit liquor.

In a letter to BJP national president JP Nadda then, Bharti, citing the examples of Gujarat and Bihar, pressed for a ban on sale of alcohol in all the BJP-ruled states including MP. This, she claimed, will help the party get the support of more women voters, like in Bihar.

Bharti had also proposed an agitation on the issue from March 8, 2021, but it was not rolled out, which she later attributed to the second Covid wave.

In September 2021, Bharti told a press conference that to ban liquor in the state, a public awareness campaign will be carried out for five months and that she would review the situation in January 2022. She hoped the Chouhan government would ban liquor in the state, adding “if it is not done, women will hit the streets from January 15, 2022, in protest, and I will join them”.

Interestingly, this press conference had coincided with the BJP nominating L Murugan as the Rajya Sabha member from MP from the seat vacated by Thaawarchand Gehlot. In this regard, it was Bharti’s way of signalling her resentment to the central leadership, a senior leader said.

BJP ministers have meanwhile shied away from commenting on Bharti’s prohibition demand, pointing out it would result in a “significant revenue loss” for the state and that a public awareness campaign is needed before imposing a blanket ban on liquor.

Four days after the prohibition deadline set by Bharti, on January 19, the Chouhan government came up with a new excise policy, slashing excise duty on liquor by 10-13 per cent. The policy allowed microbreweries in Bhopal and Indore, stipulating that those with an annual income of Rs 1 crore could get a licence to open a bar at home.

It is a different matter that the BJP has been going after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) dispensation for allegedly promoting liquor in Delhi. And that in Bihar, where it is part of the coalition government with Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), the party has been demanding a review of the liquor prohibition law enacted in 2016.

The liquor trade has been a key source of revenue for MP, especially in the wake of the GST’s implementation and two Covid-induced lockdowns. Reeling under a debt of over Rs 3.37 lakh crore, the state earned over Rs 1,183 crore in 2020-21 from the tax levied on liquor, which registered a growth of 26.14 per cent from the previous year despite the closure of liquor shops during March 24-July 31 due to the lockdown.

Belonging to the Other Backward Classes (OBC) Lodhi community, Bharti has a support base among Lodhis based in the Bundelkhand region of MP and UP. She had won the region’s Khajuraho parliamentary seat four times consecutively between 1989 and 1998.

In the 1999 Lok Sabha polls, Bharti switched to Bhopal and won the seat. Subsequently, she spearheaded the BJP’s campaign in the 2003 Assembly elections, that handed out a crushing defeat to the Digvijay Singh-led Congress dispensation.

Bharti’s tenure as the CM, however, lasted for just eight months as she was forced to resign in August 2004 after a non-bailable arrest warrant was issued against her in connection with a 1994 Hubli rioting case. This proved to be the turning point of her political career. Months later, she was suspended from the BJP following a public spat with LK Advani at the party headquarters. Her suspension was revoked a few months later, but she continued to defy the BJP high command, demanding that she should be made the CM instead of Chouhan. This led to her expulsion from the party.

In 2006, Bharti floated her own party, the Bharatiya Janshakti Party. Opposing the entry of multinationals and corporate retails stores in the state, her party activists allegedly attacked Reliance Fresh stores in Indore and Bhopal in November 2007. But a couple of years later, she resigned from her own party.

Inducted into the BJP again in 2010, Bharati contested the Lok Sabha polls from Jhansi in 2014 and became the minister for water resource, river development and Ganga rejuvenation in the Narendra Modi Cabinet. She stepped down ahead of a Cabinet reshuffle in 2017 on the health ground. She did not contest the 2019 polls after the BJP reportedly denied her ticket from Jhansi as well as Khajuraho.

A senior saffron party leader of the Vajpayee-Advani era, Bharti has been based in Bhopal for the past several years, confining herself to her Shyamla Hills bungalow, although she is often seen in various events of the Lodhi community in Bundelkhand.

At a function in Chhatarpur in February 2022, Bharati gave hints about her plan to contest the 2024 general election. “When I had declined to contest election in 2019, I had said that I will contest election in 2024,” she said.