MP: Poll time gaffes, fear of sabotage and intrigue plague Congress

Rahul was visiting Dhanora to address a rally in support of Omkar Singh Markam, who the Congress has fielded against Mandla’s incumbent BJP MP and candidate, Faggan Singh Kulaste. The commotion started when local Congress workers realised that the banner featuring a galaxy of state and district level party leaders, which was to form the backdrop for the rally’s stage also had a photograph of Kulaste.

Damage control measures were hurriedly pressed in and Kulaste’s photograph was eventually covered up with an image of Rajneesh Harvansh Singh, Congress MLA from Keolari assembly segment. The BJP, predictably, exploded with the sadistic pleasure of yet another embarrassing poll-time gaffe by its principal rival with chief minister Mohan Yadav gleefully taking a swipe at the Congress for having “accepted defeat even before the elections”.

Human error

The Congress had little defence to offer except crying “human error”. A local Congress office bearer told The Federal that Kulaste’s image didn’t just feature on the banner that adorned the stage of Rahul’s rally but also on several posters that had been put up en route the rally venue.

Such gaffes during elections aren’t uncommon and both Congress and BJP have variously been inflicted with similar embarrassments in past elections. For the Congress, though, the Dhanora incident has set off alarm bells, leaders closely involved with the party’s poll campaign in MP told The Federal.

A few days earlier, the Congress was left red-faced when the nomination form of ally Samajwadi Party’s Mina Yadav was rejected by the Returning Officer for the Khajuraho Lok Sabha seat. For the ensuing polls, the Congress had, for the first time, ceded a seat – Khajuraho – to an ally in MP; ostensibly to humour SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, whose pleas for an alliance during last year’s assembly polls were brusquely dismissed by then state Congress chief Kamal Nath, potentially jeopardising a seat-sharing pact between the two parties for Lok Sabha constituencies of Uttar Pradesh.

Humiliation in Khajuraho

The rejection of Mina Yadav’s candidature on grounds that she had not duly signed the nomination form and had also failed to furnish some other mandatory documents has now paved the way for Khajuraho’s incumbent MP and BJP candidate VD Sharma to be elected from the constituency unopposed. Officially, the Congress and the SP have been alleging that their joint candidate’s form was rejected by the Returning Officer on “flimsy grounds” and “under pressure from Sharma”, who is also the state BJP president, as well as the BJP’s central leadership.

Off the record, though, the humiliation has triggered a blame game between the Congress and the SP.

A close aide of the SP candidate told The Federal that her nomination papers were prepared under the supervision of a senior Congress leader, who is also a noted Supreme Court lawyer and has been overseeing the filing of nomination papers by Congress candidates in the remaining 28 Lok Sabha seats of the state.

“He (the Congress leader) had cleared the form before it was filed. Only he can explain why he didn’t point out the flaws,” the aide said. Congress leaders, on the other hand, are pinning the blame on the SP candidate; even speculating that she “deliberately filed incomplete nomination papers” as part of a “deal with VD Sharma”.

Systematic sabotage?

The double whammies in Dhanora and Khajuraho have triggered heightened scepticism and intrigue within a section of MP Congress leaders that sees a “pattern of systematic sabotage” of the party’s poll campaign in the state. A former Congress MP from the state told The Federal, “It is difficult to see the two incidents in isolation and wish them away as human error; we must make a sincere effort to urgently find out if there is a connection between the two and whether our campaign is being sabotaged”.

The former MP further asked, “How can an image of a senior and prominent BJP leader like Faggan Singh Kulaste through the entire process of vetting, printing and distributing banners and posters... Kulaste is not some block level BJP leader; he is a Union minister and has been an MP from Mandla for six terms and he had contested the assembly polls just four months back, even people who print flex banners and posters for elections would recognise his face, so how is it that our own leaders, including our MLA (Chainsingh Warkade), who defeated Kulaste in Niwas (assembly segment in Mandla Lok Sabha constituency), could not spot the blunder when the banner was approved?”

A senior MLA who is part of the Congress’s campaign committee for the polls conceded that his party has to be “extremely cautious and alert” during the poll campaign, asserting that “we have been in a state of flux since the assembly poll defeat and even the loyalties of old-time party members cannot be taken for granted in the current scenario”.

The MLA pointed out that the past three months have witnessed over 600 Congress leaders, including former MPs, sitting and former MLAs, office bearers and elected representatives of urban local bodies, joining the BJP.

“Who could have imagined that a party loyalist like (former Union minister) Suresh Pachouri would join the BJP along with scores of his supporters... some months back, there was even speculation of Kamal Nath and his son Chhindwara MP Nakul Nath joining the BJP and though they have stayed in the Congress, since those rumours began, a huge contingent of Nath’s loyalists have switched to the BJP... we cannot ignore the possibility of several other Congress leaders switching to the BJP eventually and that such people are on our side right now only to leak information about our campaign to the BJP or to sabotage our campaign as per the BJP’s plan,” the MLA added.

Another party leader said the present situation within the Congress is “so unpredictable that we had to think 10 times before finalising a candidate because going by the pace at which way our leaders have been switching sides, we had to be certain that a person we fielded for the polls would not walk out and join the BJP.”

“There is a lot of mistrust among leaders right now; things are very volatile”, this leader pointed out.

What Congress has to say

Jitu Patwari, who took over from Kamal Nath as state Congress chief after the assembly poll debacle, rubbished the rumours of sabotage.

Patwari told The Federal that “we are trying to find out how Kulaste’s image was printed on the banner but as far as the rejection of Mina Yadav’s nomination is concerned, we are absolutely certain that she was not at fault... her candidature was rejected as part of a conspiracy between the BJP and the returning officer; our legal team is going to challenge the returning officer’s decision in court and we have already filed a complaint with the Central Election Commission too... we will, of course, be more careful in future and ensure such incidents don’t repeat... wherever some action needs to be taken, we will take it.”