MP polls: BJP confident of winning Datia again as Congress bungles its chances

With MP going to polls on November 17, Mishra, the incumbent home minister who has held various important portfolios in the state cabinet since 2005, is once again seeking re-election from this seat in the Gwalior division. His image of a Hindutva rabble-rouser whose name often figures on the political grapevine as a potential CM face from the BJP’s ranks prevents voters in Datia from openly airing their views about him but with a little prodding the locals do unleash a litany of complaints, carefully evading any direct attack on Mishra.

Yet, the controversial BJP leader appears confident of scoring a comprehensive victory in Datia; one that would make up for the close shave he had in the 2018 assembly polls when his victory margin against the Congress’s Rajendra Bharti was a paltry 2,656 votes. Mishra’s confidence of a fourth consecutive win from Datia stems not from what he has done for the constituency since it first elected him 15 years ago, when his traditional seat of Dabra was reserved for Scheduled Castes under delimitation. Instead, it is a bumbling Congress that has given Mishra an upper hand this election season.

Bumbling Congress

On October 15, the Congress had announced the candidature of Awdhesh Nayak from the Datia seat. Nayak’s name had stunned many within the state’s political circles given his past credentials as an RSS pracharak with a reputation for making brazenly communal statements, much in the same vein as Mishra. However, in the party helmed in MP by Kamal Nath, a self-proclaimed Hanuman bhakt who has been steering the Congress on a Hindu-right trajectory, Nayak’s candidature was, perhaps, expected.

Nayak had joined the Congress a few months ago. Close aides of Nath had indicated then that the Congress would seek to exploit the old rivalry between the former RSS-BJP leader and Mishra electorally in Datia. What Nath seems to have not factored in, though, was the resistance Nayak’s candidature would trigger within the Congress. On Thursday (October 19), just as Nayak was about to inaugurate one of his election offices in Datia, the Congress announced its decision to bench him and field Mishra’s old rival, Rajendra Bharti from the seat.

Nayak out in the cold

Nayak has been sulking since and though he has refrained from speaking on the party’s decision, his supporters have been criticising his replacement openly across Datia, queering the pitch for Bharti.

“Kamal Nath had promised Nayak the party ticket from Datia because the Congress’s candidate screening surveys had tipped Nayak as the strongest contender to challenge Mishra. Nath admitted this publicly and he had also claimed that local Congress leaders in Datia had been taken into confidence before the party announced Nayak’s candidature. So what changed within four days? Kamal Nath has turned Nayak into a laughing stock; if Bharti was a strong candidate why was Nayak fielded at all,” Sunil Kumar, a Nayak supporter told The Federal.

Bharti in the fray

Bharti, on the other hand, claims the Congress had made a “mistake by nominating Nayak from Datia” and it was “good that the leadership realised its mistake and rectified it”.

A former two-term MLA from Datia, Bharti had first won the seat in the 1985 state polls and has, since, contested every assembly poll from the constituency except for the one held in 1993. However, after his debut win, he has been successful in wresting the Datia seat only once – in 1998 when he had contested on a Samajwadi Party ticket, after the Congress refused to field him as a candidate. He has faced Mishra as his rival in Datia thrice – in 2008, as a BSP candidate and in 2013 and 2018 as a Congress candidate – but lost each time, albeit with reducing margins.

Bharti told The Federal, “I have been active in Datia for four decades and I have an entire team of loyal workers in every village and block. I lost the 2008 and 2013 elections because there was a wave in the BJP’s favour back then and the Congress and in 2018, despite the BJP using every manipulation population to ensure Narottam’s victory; I brought his margin down to just over 2,500 votes. The people of Datia have faith in me and if you picked up 10 people randomly from across Datia, eight of them would tell you that if there’s a candidate who can defeat Narottam in Datia, it is Rajendra Bharti.”

“It would have been better if the Congress leadership had announced my candidature from the seat right at the beginning instead of fielding Nayak, an outsider with an RSS background, but the party realised its error and changed its decision. I am confident that any confusion this may have caused among our Congress workers or ordinary voters will be resolved soon because the campaign is yet to gain momentum and I will definitely defeat Narottam this time,” Bharti added.

Acceptable face

The ‘new’ Congress candidate isn’t entirely off the mark. Several people The Federal spoke to in Datia agreed that Bharti made for a better candidate against Mishra than Nayak because he is an “acceptable face” in the constituency who enjoys support of various caste and social groups.

“There is no doubt that Nayak has also been very active in Datia but he comes from an RSS background with a support base that is similar to Mishra’s. Dono ek hi tarah ka vote kheenchte (both would have attracted voters of a common persuasion). The Congress’s decision to field him would have alienated old workers of the party and also the substantial backward caste and Dalit voters in the constituency, who either vote for Congress or for the SP or BSP, if either of these field a good local candidate. Bharti has changed parties frequently (from Congress to SP to BSP and back to Congress) but he has never been with the BJP and so his support base is still intact,” says Ram Lakhan Shukla, who runs a kirana shop near Datia’s iconic Bir Singh Deo Palace.

Anil Kumar, another Datia local who claimed to have previously been a Mishra supporter said, “Narottam ji aur Nayak dono hi don hain, dono ki rajneeti aur vichaardhara bhi ek hi hai.. unka muqabla kaante ka hota lekin Rajendra Bharti bhi purana neta hai, log pasand karte hain usko (Narottam and Nayak are like dons; both practice politics and have a common ideology so their contest would have been a close one but Rajendra Bharti is also an old leader and is liked by people),” adding that if the Congress hadn’t created confusion over its candidates, Bharti could have been trounced Mishra this time round.

“He (Mishra) has been an MLA from here for so many years and he was a minister even before he first won from Datia; people used to say he is so strong in the BJP that he will replace Shivraj Chouhan as CM but despite all this, Datia has not seen the kind of development that is expected from a constituency represented by such a stalwart. People are unhappy, there are no jobs, there is no respite from price rise, farmers are in distress and the BJP has not done anything for them. Mishra’s behaviour with the people is also not good. This is also why I stopped supporting him. A new MLA may bring some change,” Kumar added.

Religious significance of Datia

As seat of the highly revered Shree Pitambara Peeth, dedicated to the goddesses Baglamukhi and Dhumavati, Datia holds immense religious significance for devout Hindus from across MP, particularly those from the Gwalior-Chambal, Bundelkhand and Baghelkhand regions. The religious sentiments attached to the city had, over the years, also allowed both Mishra and Nayak to use hardline Hindutva for consolidating their support base not just in Datia but also across adjoining towns and villages.

Congress' monumental blunder

It was, arguably, this common support base of the two leaders that Kamal Nath thought he could split by poaching Nayak into the Congress. At least in theory, adding the Congress’s own support base in Datia to that of Nayak’s would have made for a good winning strategy against Mishra. However, by first announcing Nayak’s candidature and then benching him, the former BJP leader’s supporters say Nath has made a “monumental blunder” that will now “cost Bharti dearly”.

“Nayak and Mishra used to have cordial relations till the time Mishra used to contest from the Dabra seat but after Mishra moved to Datia, the two became staunch rivals despite being part of the same party. This made Nayak build his separate support base, which was ideologically the same as Mishra’s but owed its loyalty not to the BJP or the RSS but to Nayak. This base could have helped the Congress but after the way Nayak was humiliated, can you expect him to work for Bharti in this election? Nayak may not help Mishra but he will also not give Bharti the additional support that is needed to defeat BJP in Datia,” a close aide of Nayak, who is still a local BJP office bearer in Datia, told The Federal.

Mishra’s re-election campaign has now begun to pick momentum amid the slanging match between supporters of Nayak and Bharti. Unfortunate as it may be, livelihood issues that voters in Datia had hoped would finally draw the attention of candidates during the polls have once again been relegated to the shadows.