Cong's denial of ticket to Siddharth Tiwari fuels rivalry between political families in MP's Vindhya region, BJP happy

Bhopal, Oct 19 (IANS) Siddharth Tiwari’s shifting to the BJP after being denied ticket from Rewa’s Teonthar Assembly seat by the Congress has brought an end to over five decade-long association of his family with the grand old party, but has increased enmity between two politically strong families of Madhya Pradesh's Vindhya region.

The young politician joined the Congress on Tuesday.

The state leadership of the Congress maintained that Siddharth Tiwari was denied ticket because of two reasons, one that his performance was found poor in the survey, and the second that the party had to select the candidates to maintain the caste equation to justify the Congress’ central leadership’s new strategy for OBC. 

Sources aware of this entire political development told IANS that Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee President Kamal Nath and Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh, who has taken the responsibility for all those seats the party lost two or more times consecutively and to keep the rebels intact with the party, tried to convince Tiwari.

Tiwari waited for a week and after the Congress declared Ramashankar Patel as candidate from Teonthar seat, he knocked the door of Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, who shifted into the saffron party in March 2020.

Sources also claimed that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has made several attempts to bring Siddharth into the party through a senior BJP leader; however, he had denied the proposal as he wanted to pursue his political career with the Congress.

Tiwari's supporters held senior Congress leader and former Leader of Opposition (LoP) Ajay Singh (Rahul) responsible for denying him the ticket. However, some others also blamed former minister Kamleshwar Patel. Both these senior Congress leaders are being blamed by Siddharth Tiwari’s supporters.

While, Ajay Singh (Rahul) is the son of former Chief Minister (late) Arjun Singh, Kamleswar’s father and former minister (late) Indrajeet Patel was a strong OBC leader of his time.

At this point of time, it is worth mentioning that the political rivalry between Arjun Singh and Sriniwas Tiwari was always in open domain as both these leaders used to miss no opportunity to weaken each other. A veteran journalist said, “Even the central leadership of the Congress then was fed up with Arjun Singh and Sriniwas Tiwari’s political rivalry. If I remember, there were two stances when Sonia Gandhi had to intervene to resolve their conflict.”   

A retired school teacher from Rewa -- Vishwakarma Dwivedi, whose father was a close friend of Sriniwas Tiwari said, “I can’t say exactly why Congress denied ticket to Siddharth, but if it true that (as has been said) Ajay Singh was behind it, then it is the second stance when Tiwari family was denied ticket. Sriniwas Tiwari was denied a ticket in 1989 and he had blamed Arjun Singh.”

Recalling another stance of political rivalry between these two late leaders, Vishwakarma Dwivedi, who is a resident of Sar in the Mangavan Assembly seat, the hometown of Sriniwas Tiwari in Rewa district, said, “During 80s Tiwari was made the health minister and he brought a major project for his home district -- Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital, that annoyed then CM Arjun Singh, and Tiwari was expelled from the cabinet and that project was put on hold. Hospital was built after he became the Assembly speaker. In 1993, when Arjun Singh supported Digvijaya Singh for CM’s post, Sriniwas managed to became the Assembly Speaker through the interference of then Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. He was made the Assembly Speaker to corner Arjun Singh’s faction in Madhya Pradesh.”

Both these leaders are no more now, however, denial of ticket to Sriniwas Tiwari’s grandson Siddharth Tiwari and his shifting to the BJP has fuelled enough to bring rivalry of these two old Congress families of Vindhya region of Madhya Pradesh again to the fore. And the BJP would make all efforts to make an impression -- Brahimn vs Khatriya in the upper caste dominated region of the state.

Congress faces this setback at a time when it is making efforts to revive its fortunes in the 30-seat Vindhya region of poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP had won 24 seats in 2018.