MP: BJP pits Malegaon accused Sadhvi Pragya against Digvijay Singh

Bhopal/New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday decided to pit firebrand saffron leader and Malegaon blast accused Pragya Singh Thakur against Congress veteran and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh in the prestigious Bhopal parliamentary seat.

BJP president Amit Shah, while addressing a campaign rally in Odisha, said that his party decided to field Ms Thakur against the “creator” of the term “Saffron Terror,” Mr Digvijay Singh, so that the issue could be decided in the “people’s court”.

The BJP’s move to field Ms Thakur is being viewed in political circles here as a conscious attempt by the party to revive the Hindutva plank in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh just as it is doing across the country.

“We consider the election in Bhopal to be the most significant for us. Pragyan’s victory in the polls will remove once and for all the ‘Hindu terror’ tag by some Congress leaders,” a senior BJP leader here said.

Congress’ Digvijay Singh is currently trying to shed his anti-Hindu image with temple runs in Bhopal Lok Sabha constituency, considered an impregnable fortress of the BJP.

“It is a Dharmayudh (a crusade), not an ordinary poll battle. It is a fight against those who are conspiring against nation,” the self-proclaimed god woman told reporters in Bhopal on Wednesday.

Ms Thakur, 48, who was a leader of the Akhil Bharativya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the BJP’s student, was declared the BJP’s candidate for Bhopal hours after she formally joined the party.

“It is absolutely no big challenge for me (to defeat Mr Singh). I am going to win the elections,” she said and added that the Opposition had “insulted the Hindu dharma, the Sanatan dharma, Hindutva” and the bhagwa (saffron flag), and this will be one of the major issues of her campaign.

A few minutes after she was declared the BJP’s candidate for Bhopal, Mr Singh uploaded a video on his Twitter account in which he was seen sporting a “red tilak” on his forehead. He welcomed Ms Thakur, saying, “Hoping she will like the peaceful, literate and cultured environment of Bhopal.”

“I pray to Narmada for her and seek blessings from Narmada to lead us on path of truth, non-violence and ‘dharma’”, his Twitter post said, and ended with the religious slogan “Narmada Hare”.

Mr Singh has been a bitter critic of the RSS and had linked it to the 2008 Mumbai terror attack carried out by Pakistani terrorists.

BJP sources said the party had been mulling various options for Bhopal, including former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Union minister Uma Bharti and sitting Bhopal MP Alok Sanjar. But the RSS dug in its heels to pit Sadhvi Pragyan against Mr Singh, leading to her candidature.

Though considered a BJP bastion, Mr Singh’s candidature had upset the saffron party’s strategy, especially after losing the state to the Congress after more than 15 years of rule.  

Ms Thakur was arrested in connection with a case involving a bomb blast in Malegaon in Maharashtra on September 29, 2008, in which six people were killed and 101 others injured.

She has been discharged by a court on charges under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) in the 2008 case, but is still facing trial under other criminal provisions. She is currently out on bail.

To a question on being an accused in the blast case, Ms Thakur said she had got a clean chit from the court of law and all the schemes against her had failed.

“Dharma ki jai hogi, adharm ka nash hoga (The righteous will win and the sinners will be destroyed),” she said in Bhopal.

The BJP’s state incharge and Rajya Sabha MP Vinay Sahsrabuddhe tweeted that Ms Thakur “symbolises the fighting spirit of a woman, the courage for braving unspeakable torture for victory of truth and above all our relentless struggle to free democracy from crass vote bank politics”.

Reacting to Ms Thakur’s candidature, PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti said, “Imagine the anger if I’d field a terror accused. Channels would’ve gone berserk by now trending a mehboobaterrorist hashtag! According to these guys terror has no religion when it comes to saffron fanatics but otherwise all Muslims are terrorists. Guilty until proven innocent.”

Other candidates announced by the BJP included Raj Bahadur Singh and Ramakant Bhargav from Sagar and Vidisha respectively. External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj had won from Vidisha in 2014 but she had announced that she will not fight the polls this time due to health reasons. Mr Yadav will be the BJP nominee from Guna, which is held by the Congress’ Jyotiraditya Scindia.

The BJP is yet to announce its candidate’s name from Indore, earlier held by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumnitra Mahajan, who is not contesting for crossing the age bar of 75 years.

Interestingly, BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, whose name is doing the rounds to contest from Indore, tweeted, “People of Indore, activists and well wishers of the country want me to contest the elections. But we all need to make Narendra Modi the Prime Minister for making India prosperous and rich... The people of West Bengal are with PM Modi. I have to live in Bengal, so I have decided not to contest the elections.”

Mr Vijayvargiya is the BJP’s in charge of TMC-ruled West Bengal.

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