Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Dec 31: As the “perfume war” is hitting up between the BJP and the Samajwadi Party with barely two months to go for the elections in five states, disquiet has spread in Congress with Rahul Gandhi is again up to his now famous “disappearing tricks” and the BJP looking for space to “hide” the union minister of state for home Ajay Mishra Teni.
Though kept at arm’s length, Ajay Mishra, whose son Ashish Mishra is the principal accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri violence, the major eye-sore for the votes belonging to the farming community, is sill a member in the union cabinet led by Narendra Modi. But he is kept away from BJP campaign meeting in Uttar Pradesh fearing that his presence might turn the farmer voters against the ruling party.
Much as the allegation that Mishra’s son Ashish was part of the convoy that ran into a farmer protest march in Lakhimpur Kheri leaving five dead, is embarrassing for the BJP, but his value for the party cannot be undermined because there are not many Brahmin leaders in the party. The regime of ‘Thakur’ Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is often accused of leaving the Brahmins alienated, and as all parties sniff an opportunity, Mishra had been notably inducted in the July shake-up of his Council of Ministers by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He was the only Brahmin face from UP included.
So while the BJP can hardly shake off Mishra, a two-term MP with considerable clout in Lakhimpur Kheri, and has held firm against the Opposition’s demands to sack him, he has not been part of any of the recent party organisational activities ahead of the Assembly polls. He, however, was part of recent meeting of Brahmin leaders from UP held in Delhi, where a four-member committee was constituted to draw a roadmap to reach out to Brahmins, but was absent at the meeting those Brahmin leaders held with party national president J P Nadda the next day. Mishra has not been assigned any task under the Brahmin outreach programme, a source said.
Neither has Mishra been engaged in any event of the ongoing BJP Jan Vishwas Yatras across the state, sources said. On the other hand, BJP’s UP leaders like Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma, Kaushal Kishore, Pankaj Chaudhary and S P Singh Baghel, who were inducted into the Union Ministry the same time as Mishra, are a prominent part of the Yatras as well as BJP sammelans.
A BJP leader said the party was unlikely to engage Mishra in campaign-related activities, though he might be deployed for canvassing at Lakhimpur when the elections are announced given his popularity as an “active and aggressive” leader.
Away from the UP battlefield, Mishra has been pretty busy. His Twitter handle has routine updates on the MoS’s meetings in Delhi and other parts of the country — a fact that BJP leaders have taken to stressing when asked about Mishra.
Rajya Sabha MP Shiv Pratap Shukla, who heads the BJP committee formed for Brahmin outreach, said: “The party has not kept Ajay Mishra Teni out from party programmes. He has his own busy schedule in his capacity as Minister of State for Home Affairs.”
But its own campaign trail apart, the BJP, however, is fully engaged in the “perfume war” with the SP as the Income Tax department on Friday conducted raids at premises of two leading Kannauj-based perfume traders, hours before Akhilesh Yadav was scheduled to hold a press meet. One of the two businessmen raided was a SP leader Pushpraj Jain, the “Samajwadi Perfume” fame.
The other perfume dealer raided had no political connections and the local perfume traders said Fauzan Malik and his family were “down to earth” people who have spread their business within the country and abroad. One of the oldest perfume manufacturers of Kannauj, Fauzan’s family was a major contributor in developing the perfume industry in UP.
The SP leader had created a flutter by accusing the BJP of raiding the premises of another perfume dealer Piyush Jain due to “mistaken identity.” The centre wanted to raid Pushpraj Jain because he is connected with the SP but the computers misled the department to Piyush Jain, Yadav had alleged. The income tax department had denied the allegation and finally launched another raid on Pushpraj Jain. Pushpraj Jain “Pampi” has old association with Samajwadi Party and has spread his business to Mumbai. He also runs a petrol pump and cold storage. Jain was elected as MLC from Etawah-Farrukhabad in 2016 and his term will end in March 2022. As per his election affidavit in 2016, Jain and his family own movable assets worth Rs 37.15 crore and immovable assets worth Rs 10 crore.
In November this year, Akhilesh launched a perfume called “Samajwadi Sugandh” or “Attar”, which was manufactured by Pushpraj Jain. The perfume had the image of a cycle, the Samajwadi Party’s election symbol, on it and colours of the bottle resembled the party flag colours of olive green and red.
The prime minister during his recent rally in Kanpur had targeted the SP on the “Samajwadi Sugandh” issue alleging that the rival party had spread the “perfume of corruption” as the IT raids kept yielding crores of rupees in black money and illegal gold bars from the premises of Piyush Jain holding him to be the SP leader.
Meanwhile, in the Congress the party workers are disappointed that days after the party announced that the former president Rahul Gandhi would kick off the Congress election campaign in Punjab with a rally in Moga on January 3, they learnt that the leader had flown away to Italy “on a personal visit.”
Sources said Rahul left India on Wednesday, a day after attending the party’s 137th foundation day event at the AICC headquarters in Delhi. Sources said he is set to ring in the new year in Italy, where he will spend time with his aging maternal grandmother, like last year.
“Rahul Gandhi is on a brief personal visit. The BJP and its media friends should not spread rumours unnecessarily,” Congress communication department head Randeep Surjewala said, confirming that the former Congress president was abroad.
Party sources said on Thursday that Rahul, who spent nearly three weeks at an undisclosed foreign location in November as well, is now expected to address the rallies in Punjab and Goa on January 15 and 16.
Rahul’s trip abroad has led to disquiet in the Punjab unit of Congress as it comes at a time when the party is struggling with factionalism and desertions in the run-up to the Assembly elections. The Moga rally was expected to be a show of unity and party had already started making arrangements for the rally, and the venue had been finalized. “We did not even know that he has gone abroad. We learnt about it only after the Opposition raised the issue and Surjewala defended the visit,” said a leader.
“The rally has been postponed now. We were hoping that Rahul will be able to bring Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi, PPCC chief Navjot Singh Sidhu and other leaders on the same stage and the different voices, which are harming the party interests, would be silenced. Also, his (Rahul) absence delays the process of ticket distribution,” he said.
While Sidhu has been seeking declaration of Chief Minister candidate ahead of the polls, asserting that he would not be just a showpiece for the elections, a section of party leaders said they were watching him closely. “We do not know if he is also headed towards another party. But he is making it clear that he would not campaign for the party unless he is declared the CM candidate,” a leader said.
Adding to the trouble for the state unit, Cabinet minister Rana Gurjit Singh on Thursday took on Sidhu. “I challenge him to deny me the party ticket. I will win as an Independent,” he said. He said he was shocked that the fight was currently not about getting the Congress to retain power in the state but about who becomes the Chief Minister.
A party leader said, “We were only hoping that the top leadership would intervene and control Sidhu. But it seems to be free for all now. We used to criticise former chief minister Amarinder Singh for holidaying and being inaccessible but what is Rahul doing now?”
Apart from factionalism, the Congress is dealing with aggressive poaching of its leaders by the BJP. The party recently lost three sitting MLAs to the BJP. On Thursday, a senior leader from Majitha, Sukhjinder Raj Singh, resigned from the post of PUNGRAIN chairman, saying he was miffed with the Channi government for not delivering justice in the Bargari sacrilege case. He may join the BJP or AAP, sources said.
Another worrying news for the Congress has come from Ludhiana where state Cabinet minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu has put up his billboards without the party symbol or any other Congress leader’s photograph.
