BHOPAL: Controversial Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Bhopal Pragya Singh Thakur has failed to find a place in the list of party’s star campaigners for the crucial 28 Assembly bypolls slated for November 3 in the BJP-ruled state.
This is despite 16 out of the 28 Assembly seats, up for he byelections, are located in the Gwalior-Chambal region from where the 2008 Malegaon blast accused originally hails. And two of those 16 seats are located in Bhind district, Thakur’s native place.
The BJP on Wednesday released a list of 30 star campaigners for the bypolls. The last time Thakur campaigned for the BJP in the polls was during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when she was in the poll fray from Bhopal against former CM Digvijaya Singh.
While featuring in a BJP roadshow in Agar-Malwa district during the 2019 General elections, Thakur had publicly dubbed Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse as a “patriot”, which had triggered a major controversy and even a snub from PM Narendra Modi.
While state Congress spokesperson K K Mishra questioned why the BJP has shied away from naming Thakur a star campaigner for the bypolls, saffron party spokesperson Rajneesh Agrawal downplayed the issue by saying the MPs aren’t named among star campaigners for bypolls.
“She might be given some assignment by state party chief V D Sharma,” said Agrawal. Also, missing from the list of star campaigners are Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, party president J P Nadda and UP CM Yogi Adityanath. Names of all these national leaders figure in the star campaigners list for the Bihar Assembly polls.
Questioning the absence of the Modi’s name from the list, state Congress spokesperson Bhupendra Gupta said: “It seems either the BJP has realised that the PM is losing his popularly or the national leaders are deliberately keeping away from the bypoll campaigning, knowing the fact that the party is in deep trouble in the state.”