THE BRUISING Madhya Pradesh Assembly poll loss continues to haunt the Congress, with two party leaders on Monday caught on camera engaged in a physical scuffle at the state headquarters here. At the heart of the fight – between MP Congress Scheduled Caste Department president Pradeep Ahirwar and its spokesperson Shaharyar Khan – was senior leader Digvijaya Singh.
Specifically, his role in ticket distribution during the November Assembly elections, giving the ruling BJP another stick to beat the Congress with.
In the videos of the fight, which went viral, Ahirwar and Khan are seen arguing over the ticket distribution and hurling abuses at each other, leading to physical altercation, during the course of which Khan falls to the ground.
Congress party insiders said the argument started after Ahirwar accused Digvijaya Singh, former MP chief minister and currently a Rajya Sabha MP, of mistakes in ticket distribution, which was contested by Khan.
Congress spokesperson K K Mishra said the party had taken note of the matter and issued show cause notices to the two leaders. If the explanation by the two leaders was not found to be satisfactory, “disciplinary action would be taken”, Mishra said.
Khan told The Indian Express that Ahirwar and he had had differences in the past. “(On Monday) We were at the PCC campus and talking about the Assembly election loss, when Ahirwar alleged that Digvijaya took money for ticket distribution. He also questioned Digvijaya’s statements blaming EVMs, which made me angry.”
Khan added that it was “all a ploy by Ahirwar to leave the party and join the BJP”. Ahirwar, in turn, accused Khan of being “anti-Dalit” and “harbouring ill feelings” towards him. Adding that he would tell the party this, Ahirwar said: “There was some talk about the Assembly elections, but I never said a word against Raja saheb (Digvijaya).”
Since the loss in the elections, in which Digvijaya played a prominent role along with fellow former CM Kamal Nath, the veteran has more than once raised the possibility of EVM tampering. Last week, Digvijaya held a press conference in Bhopal where he tried to prove with a dummy EVM how this could be done.
The Congress, which ran a high-optics campaign under Digvijaya and Kamal Nath, with other leaders squeezed out, finished with a mere 66 seats in the Assembly polls, with the BJP winning 163. In 2018, the Congress had won 114 seats, emerging as the single-largest party, ahead of the BJP’s tally of 109.
During a recent event in Guna, Digvijaya’s brother Lakshman Singh, who lost in the Assembly polls by a huge margin, also questioned the attack on EVMs, saying: “Did the EVM machine say make someone a Congress candidate?… Some machines can be faulty, but it is not the case that all machines are faulty. Who introduced EVM machines? It was the Congress party.” Lakshman, who earlier had a brief stint in the BJP after rebelling against the Congress, went on to accuse “dalaals (middlemen)” of leading the Congress down “the wrong path”.
State BJP spokesperson Narendra Saluja, who shared the videos of the Congress leaders fighting on X, said: “Ahirwar is a supporter of (former MP unit chief) Kamal Nath, while Khan is Digvijaya Singh’s supporter. After Jitu Patwari was appointed PCC chief, supporters of Singh and Nath are regularly resigning to destabilise him. This shows the intense internal disputes in the Congress.”
