A “change of heart” and switchovers go hand-in-hand during the election festival when ideology also goes for a quick toss if political leaders are denied tickets to contest or ignored by their parent parties.
As the Lok Sabha contest 2019 nears and nervous energy is in the air with parties finalising their lists of candidates on the basis of their “winnability”, a whole lot of veterans and newbies on Saturday jettisoned their parties unabashedly finding a “new cause” to be in the political war field.
JD(S) general secretary Danish Ali joined BSP “with the blessings” of his party chief HD Deve Gowda. Ali’s move came as a surprise as he was a go-between Deve Gowda and Congress president Rahul Gandhi in settling Lok Sabha seat sharing between the two parties in Karnataka. Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy dubbed his move a “political arrangement”.
“I never asked for anything even when I was in the JD(S), it was up to Deve Gowdaji to decide what work to assign me. I have come here after taking the blessings and permission of Deve Gowdaji. I will work wherever Behenji assigns me”, he said. There were more shockwaves as the day progressed. If Biju Janata Dal (BJD) MP Balabhadra Majhi switched over to BJP, Congress MLA from Salepur (Cuttack district) Prakash Chandra Behera resigned from his party.
With a loss of one, the BJD soon got one back as Harish Chandra Panda, nephew of Odisha BJP president Basant Kumar Panda, joined the party in the presence of Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik.
Similar developments marked Uttarakhand, Assam and Andhra Pradesh. In a real shocker, former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Maj Gen (retd) BC Khanduri’s son Manish, a former journalist, joined Congress at a rally in Dehradun, addressed by Rahul Gandhi. The Congress president claimed that the son quit as his father was insulted when he dared to ask a question as the chairman of Standing Committee on Defence.
“He (BC Khanduri) gave all his life to Army. But when he asked a question on national security in Parliament & spoke the truth that the way Government should help Army, it is not there, then he was removed from the chairmanship of that Committee”, Rahul said after he presented Manish before the public.
On his part Manish spoke of him taking blessings of his father before deciding his cross-over to the Congress.
“I believe that under Rahul’s leadership, Congress will make country stronger. Before coming here, I sought blessings of my father. He asked me if I can walk on path of truth, I said, ‘yes’”, the junior Khanduri said justifying his move. In neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, BJP got a jolt as its MP from Prayagraj, Shyama Charan Gupta, joined the Samajwadi Party and was given the ticket to conest from Banda.
In Assam, where the BJP is set to field party’s trouble-shooter and State Minister Himanta Biswas Sarma from Tezpur, the sitting BJP MP Ram Prasad Sarma tendered his resignation from the party. Down south, in Hyderabad, former MLA from Pithapuram V Geetha and former TDP leader Adala Prabhakar Reddy join the YSR Congress Party.
As the give and take continued during the day between parties, picking cherries for their poll-list, BJP did not comment on Odisha BJP president’s nephew joining BJD but welcomed the BJD MP Baldhadra in the party saying as his party left him “he joined Modiji”. Union Minister and senior BJP leader from Odisha commented, “Since Balbhadra ji is from railway background he had developed a unique model by bringing together Center and State. You had given him the credit for enabling railway connectivity in Nabarangpur and Malkangiri. His party left him, he joined Modi ji. We welcome him”. In the ongoing spree of swtichovers, BJP had last week roped in three top Trinamool Congress leaders and MPs from West Bengal, one sitting MP from Haryana and a close former aide of Sonia Gandhi and Congress General Secreary Tom Vadakkan from Kerala.