Two Vice Presidents of Congress Mathura Dutt Joshi and Bittoo Karnataka join BJP in the presence of UK CM Dhami, BJP state chief Mahendra Bhatt and MLA Kishore Upadhyay
The Uttarakhand Congress seems to be disintegrating with its senior leaders leaving the party and joining the saffron party which is ruling the state for the second time after its back to back victory in 2022. While lot of leaders had earlier joined the BJP with Badrinath MLA Bhandari joining it during the parliamentary elections at the behest of the Pauri Garhwal MP Anil Baluni while he was contesting from Pauri Garhwal seat, the Congress senior leader and former Uttarakhand Congress chief Kishore Upadhyay had joined the saffron party in 2022. Since then lot of other local Congress leaders have changed sides joining the BJP and the trend seems to still continuing. It may be recalled that this mass defection of the senior Congress leaders and MLAs commenced in 2016-17 when Congress heavy weight Satpal Maharaj took the lead joining BJP followed by nine MLAs including the former Justice turned state CM Vijay Bahuguna, ministers like Yashpal Arya, Dr.Harak Singh Rawat, Subodh Uniyal etc. These leaders were annoyed with the autocratic style of functioning of Harish Rawat, the then CM finally resulting in destabilizing the Congress government led by Rawat and BJP coming to power in 2017. Since then , the Congress party ridden by tremendous factionalism and internal squabbles between various groups led by Harish Rawat, Uttarakhand Congress chief Karan Maharaj, Pritam Singh, Ganesh Godiyal, Dr.Harak Singh etc couldn’t see each other eye to eye and the party seems to be disintegrating day by day with second line leaders joining BJP and the saffron party leaders engineering defection on mass scale. The central Congress has intervened number of times with earlier Devendra Yadav, now Kumari Shailja doing her best to keep the flock together but of no avail. The Congress high command had recently convened several meetings in Delhi addressed by senior Congress leaders including Kumari Shailja warning the state and local Congress leaders to give up narrow vested interests and unitedly fight the BJP but instead of the unity the party has further disintegrated. During the recent by-election of Kedarnath and now the local elections the party has again lost two important leaders , one Mathura Dutt Joshi, senior Congress Vice president and spokesman and Bitto Karnatak, the Vice president and very close confident of Harish Rawat associated with Congress in Kumaon division for the last thirty five years. Bitto Karnatak has joined Congress because the party leadership has accorded the ticket to a BJP person from Almora, sidelining the committed party worker while Mathura Dutt Joshi a strong bete noire of Harish Rawat left Congress because his wife was denied the party ticket from Pithoragarh Municipal Corporation seat. Both the senior leaders have joined the BJP in the presence of the Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and the Mahendra Bhatt, MP in Dehradun who presented them bouquets and BJPs saffron Patta enrolling them as BJP primary members. The former president of Uttarakhand Congress Ganesh Godiyal has termed these defections as the selfish and opportunist move of these senior Congress leaders saying that the BJP is engineering defection in the party by giving them greed. He said it has not happened in one day or two but the exercise was going on for the last several days and months and it has finally fructified today. Godiyal said that the greedy leaders are leaving the party which is good for its health and Congress is being cleaned of the filthy and dirty elements. According to the report of Garhwal Post on April 25, 2024 Joshi had badly criticised the BJP terming it as the party of mafias and corrupters. He had then said in a Garhwal Post report : Uttarakhand Pradesh Congress Committee Vice President, Organisation and Administration, Mathura Dutt Joshi today alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has now become a den of the corrupt, adulterers, miscreants, rapists and mafia. Joshi claimed that all the corrupt, rapists and mafia of the entire country are eager to join the BJP and wash away their sins by take a dip in the Ganga (in the form of BJP).
Mathua Dutt Joshi claimed that seeing the current direction and condition of the BJP, which claims to be a party with a difference, and which has had leaders like Deendayal Upadhyay, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, there is a visible decline. He also claimed that the souls of the above-mentioned leaders must be really sad to see such a sorry state of affairs in the BJP. These great leaders had dedicated their entire lives to building the party.
Joshi added that, in the past 5 years, all the corrupt people of the country, mining mafia, land mafia, those accused of misconduct with women have joined the BJP. Today, the BJP has become their base. He said that the BJP government led by Narendra Modi has misused the centre’s powers and deployed the ED, CBI and IT to go after the mafia and corrupt people, who are eager to absolve themselves of their sins by joining the BJP, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is claiming total honesty and integrity in the election rallies.
Just few months after he joined the saffron party criticizing his parent party that had given him everything. There is no dearth of such opportunists in politics.
I fondly remember when Indira Gandhi was PM she had responded to a question of mediamen that no-one can defeat Congress but its own leaders are responsible for its defeat from within.
