In an incident which has left the grand old party red-faced, the Madhya Pradesh Congress has elected a BJP leader for the post of the secretary of a district unit of the youth wing of their party in the organisational election held between December 10 and 12. The Youth Congress’s organisational elections ended on December 18 (Friday) and BJP leader- Harshit Singhai was “elected” by 12 votes.
The incident came to the fore when Harshit Singhai started receiving congratulatory messages over his new “post” in Jabalpur.
It’s been nine months since Harshit Singhai walked out of Madhya Pradesh Congress
Singhai was one of the leaders who quit Congress in March when scores of party MLAs and workers followed Jyotiraditya Scindia to the BJP. However, surprisingly the change has not displayed in Congress’s records in these past nine months.
Though the election of Harshit Singhai for the post of the youth wing general secretary now stands revoked, the blooper by the party’s state unit was being plugged as a crude display of the party’s disconnect with ground realities.
I had written to Rahul Gandhi and the former CM of Madhya Pradesh Kamal Nath when I left: BJP leader Singhai
Speaking about Congress party’s goof-up, the BJP leader remarked: “The most laughable is the fact that no one was interested in the polls and I was elected general secretary. I left the Congress on March 10 with Scindia-ji. I filled in my nomination for the Youth Congress polls three years ago.”
“When I joined the BJP with Scindia-ji, I requested the party that my name be dropped from the Youth Congress polls but nothing was done. When I called again, they asked me to send a mail explaining the circumstances in which I left the party. I had written to Kamal Nath (former Chief Minister) and Rahul Gandhi. This is what the Youth Congress has done across Madhya Pradesh. Those who are not in the party anymore are being elected,” said Singhai explaining that after nominations for the post of the youth wing general secretary was submitted, the polls kept getting delayed. They were first stalled because of the Madhya Pradesh election in 2018 and later because of the national election, confirmed Singhai.
Congress accuses BJP of resorting to “cheap tactics”
Meanwhile, the former state Youth Congress chief Kunal Chaudhary lashed out at Singhai accusing him of resorting to “cheap tactics” to malign his former party and lying about withdrawing his nomination. He said as soon as the error was flagged, the appointment was cancelled.
MP Youth Congress election coordinator Maqsood Mirza opined: “It’s a cheap publicity stunt of BJP. Singhai filed his nomination in March. Later, he joined BJP but he didn’t withdraw his nomination purportedly. The election process was held online and nobody paid attention as there were more than 1800 nominations and Singhai was not a popular leader.”
