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In a setback to the ruling BJP in Madhya Pradesh, months before the state is scheduled to hold Assembly polls, Deepak Joshi, a former state minister under the BJP and son of former chief minister late Kailash Joshi, joined the Congress on Saturday in the presence of party’s state unit chief Kamal Nath.
Joshi had been airing his discontent with BJP of late over what he calls the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government’s failure to construct a memorial to Kailash Joshi. After joining the opposition party on Saturday, he claimed that Kamal Nath, as the then CM, had expedited sanctioning of land for this purpose.
“The respect the Congress gave to my father…maybe the BJP did not do that,” he told the media at a press conference. “In fact, they insulted him. I am here to take revenge for that insult. I have been asking the Chief Minister to construct a memorial…instead they are building a Rs 100-crore BJP building…”
Welcoming Joshi into the party, Nath said, “This is a historic day not for the Congress but for politics. Deepak Joshi has decided to support the truth; he is welcome in this fight to save democracy and end Jungle Raj in MP.”
Hitting back, the BJP asserted that the saffron party’s workers are the “true inheritors” of Kailash Joshi’s legacy and are his ideological successors. State BJP leaders criticised Joshi for joining the Congress, arguing that “his father had nothing in common with the Congress”.
Party’s state spokesperson Hitesh Bajpai said Kailash Joshi “lives in the heart of lakhs of BJP workers” and “we carry forward his legacy”. Referring to the late leader’s portrait that his son carried during the press conference, Bajpai said: “Just by moving his picture here and there doesn’t mean Kailash-ji will move here and there. He will be our foundation…. It is sad that Deepak-ji has joined Congress after being with us for a long time.”
BJP state secretary Rajneesh Aggarwal said Joshi may be the “biological heir” of Kailash Joshi but the BJP is the late leader’s “ideological heir”.
Joshi, meanwhile, accused CM Chouhan for the death of his wife during the Covid-19 pandemic, alleging that the local administration’s ignorance meant that his wife did not get an ambulance to the hospital.
The state Congress have welcomed the development and in Joshi its supporters see an opportunity to capitalise on his father’s goodwill — Kailash Joshi’s stint as CM, and a seven-time MLA, earned him the moniker ‘Sant Rajneta’ (political saint) among supporters.
Congress workers are expecting Joshi’s own experience as a three-time MLA to help the party in the state elections that are set to be held this winter.
“The main advantage Deepak Joshi will carry along with him is his father’s goodwill among the people. We expect several BJP leaders to follow suit (and join the Congress),” a senior Congress leader said. “Not only will this have an advantage in Malwa region but we also expect to sway the Brahmin vote in the region, as there is an impression that Kailash Joshi was not accorded the respect he deserved, which has angered many BJP workers as well from Malwa.”
Joshi’s two-decade-long political career began at the dawn of the millennium, and he successfully entered electoral politics by winning the Assembly polls from Bagli seat, in Dewas district, in 2003. He successfully contested twice from his family’s hometown, Hatpipliya, in 2008 and 2013, and was inducted into Chouhan’s cabinet following a third successive victory and remained its member until 2018.
He lost the Assembly election from Hatpiplya in 2018 to Congress’s Manoj Choudhary, who went on to join the BJP in 2020 and won again from Hatpiplya in the subsequent by-election.
A loyalist of Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, Choudhary had jumped ship with Scindia during his rebellion against the Congress, which eventually led to the fall of the Kamal Nath government.
