Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Deepak Joshi — a former State Cabinet Minister, a three-time MLA, and the son of former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, the late Kailash Joshi — joined the Congress on Saturday.
Mr. Joshi, who joined the Congress carrying a portrait of his father at the party’s State headquarters in Bhopal, accused the Shivraj Singh-led BJP government and the BJP organisation of not respecting the legacy of Kailash Joshi.
The senior Joshi, who had a brief tenure at the helm in the late 1970s, is revered in Madhya Pradesh politics due to his clean image. He has even been dubbed the rajnainik sant (political saint) by some. He is also one of the foundational members of the BJP in Madhya Pradesh.
“...My father’s legacy was honesty and walking the talk every time, which I was trying to live up to all along, but they [the BJP], forcibly tried to take away [my] honesty and probity. The party workers who wanted to take the path shown by Joshi- ji [his father, who passed away in 2019] were persecuted. I tried to explain this to everyone in the party but no one would pay any heed,” Mr. Joshi, 60, who won his first election in 2003, and unsuccessfully contested the 2018 Assembly elections from Hatpiplya seat in Dewas district, said.
While becoming a member of the Congress party in the presence of former Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath, Mr. Joshi blamed the BJP government for not constructing a memorial to the late Kailash Joshi despite Mr. Nath having sanctioned land for the purpose during his tenure as Chief Minister.
The disgruntled leader also launched a frontal personal attack on Mr. Chouhan, accusing him of corruption. He also targeted the CM for the death of his [Mr. Joshi’s] wife, who passed away “due to delay in the arrival of ambulance in 2021” during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr. Joshi asked how the value of Mr. Chouhan’s assets had grown to ₹9.5 crore.
“We talk about 40% [in a reference to allegations of ‘commission’ taken by the BJP government’s representatives] in Karnataka, but I think it is 80% in Madhya Pradesh,” Mr. Joshi said, accusing Mr. Chohan’s government of corruption.
The former Minister said that if his party wanted, he would prepare to contest from Budhni (Mr. Chouhan’s seat). Mr. Nath, meanwhile, said that Mr. Joshi hadn’t sought any post or ticket, but the party expected him to carry the message of importance of social values in politics.
Having lost the 2018 elections to Congress’ Manoj Choudhary, who later moved with a group of other MLAs to the BJP, paving the way for Mr. Nath’s ouster and Mr. Chouhan’s return in 2020, Mr. Joshi was sidelined by the BJP. His stock diminished further when Mr. Choudhary won the byelection necessitated after the political switch.
Reacting to the latest development, which comes six months before the State Assembly elections, the BJP’s State secretary Rajneesh Agrawal said that members of the party, and not members of a bloodline, were the ideological flagbearers of Kailash Joshi’s legacy, and it wouldn’t be damaging from an electoral standpoint either.
The Congress is eyeing a sympathy wave among the Brahmins of the Malwa-Nimar region with Deepak Joshi in its camp, while some BJP sources conceded that it was a “perception damage” at the very least and that it would carry “wrong signals till Delhi”.
