Madhya Pradesh polls: Every fifth candidate is a relative of a BJP leader

Congress leaders have already started calling the BJP the Bharatiya Janata 'Pariwar'

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has time and again blamed the Congress party and the Gandhi family for foisting dynastic politics on the nation. But in Madhya Pradesh, the party might find it difficult to follow the same strategy given the number of senior leaders fighting to secure tickets for their kin. Till now, the party has announced 225 candidates who would run for the coming Assembly elections; of that, at least 42 are sons, wives or close relatives of senior BJP leaders. In other words, every fifth candidate in the state is a relative of a BJP leader. Former chief minister Babulal Gaur's daughter-in-law Krishna Gaur and party general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya's son Akash Vijayvargiya are among the latest to get tickets. And guess what, Congress leaders are not letting that opportunity pass them by. They have already started calling the BJP the Bharatiya Janata ”Pariwar”.

 

Growing importance

 

The candidature of Sanjay Singh Masani, brother-in law of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, from the Waraseoni (Balaghat) seat has started to bother leaders of his former party. Bharatiya Janata Party leader and state agriculture minister Gaurishankar Bisen, who had earlier said that Masani was a political lightweight, has now announced he would campaign against Masani. “As long as the CM’s brother-in-law was in the party, he had some standing but not any longer,” said Bisen, an MLA from Balaghat. The change of stance might have something to do with the importance the Congress has attached to Masani's switch from day one. Masani had joined the Congress in the presence of PCC chief Kamal Nath and campaign committee chief Jyotiraditya Scindia in Bhopal on Saturday.

 

What's in a spelling

 

Using artistic licence, an oft-used Shakespearean quote might be changed to, “What's in a spelling... as long as the pronunciation is the same”. A Facebook post on demonetisation by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was released verbatim through a prepared note by the Press Information Bureau. The only difference was, instead of “demonetisation”, the note called the episode “demonitisation”. The FM hailed “demonitisation” for increasing digitalisation, tax collections and the tax base to give more resources to the government to spend on the poor and on infrastructure.