Local party leaders in MP begin competing for attention as polls approach

Bhopal: The pressure politics tactic has already started to take centre stage in Madhya Pradesh ahead of the 2019 Assembly elections.

In order to remain politically relevant inside their respective parties and to decide on their candidature for future elections, leaders from both national parties, the BJP and the Congress, engage in pressure politics.

Later this year, the state is slated to hold the Assembly elections. Both the BJP and the Congress are currently in a strong position to regain power, and all political officials from both parties are well aware of this trend.

Those MLAs who want to contest the upcoming Assembly elections or want their parties to give tickets to their family members have already started indulging in pressure politics.

Therefore, such leaders do not want to stay still as the leaders in their parties decide the candidates. So the best way for them is to create pressure on the party to give them tickets. This is the reason why many politicians are not shying away from using pressure politics on their own parties.

The first political leader that comes to mind using pressure tactics in the state is former minister Deepak Joshi, the son of former Chief Minister Kailash Joshi. He raised the issue of corruption in his Assembly constituency which was later neglected by the BJP workers resulting in him joining the Congress.

Deepak Joshi is the first political leader to have defected from the BJP. Apart from this, there are many other leaders in the Saffron party who are continuously working on the politics of pressure. There are several BJP leaders turning rebels such as former MP Raghunandan Sharma, former minister Ajay Vishnoi and Anoop Mishra, who have given anti-party statements to embarrass the saffron party.

The BJP is troubled by the pressure politics of its own leaders, and in the Congress also the situation is not all different.

Recently, senior Congress leader and former state BSP president, Satyaprakash Sakhwar joined the BJP. There are many other leaders from all parties who are working on the politics of pressure.

The Bahujan Samaj Party, Samajwadi Party and the Aam Aadmi Party are inducting the disenchanted BJP and Congress leaders into their fold. All the above three parties are making up their minds to bet on such leaders who have connected with the masses and are disgruntled with the two national parties (BJP and Congress).

Political analysts feel that while the BJP has started a campaign to pacify their disgruntled leaders, the Congress too is trying to end revolt within their party ranks ahead of the upcoming Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls.

Both the BJP and the Congress are aware that such disgruntled leaders could pose a threat to their political fortunes and could alter their caste equations. This is the reason that for both the national parties, there is a possibility of their own party leaders becoming a bigger threat as compared to their political opponents, political analysts say.

With inputs from IANS