Bringing an embarrassing episode to an end, the Madhya Pradesh Youth Congress on Wednesday annulled the election of BJP workers Harshit Singhai and Umang Sharma to organisational posts in the party's youth wing in the state.
The two were "elected" as Jabalpur north Assembly unit secretary and Seoni district unit secretary respectively, despite having defected to the BJP along with Jyotiraditya Scindia in March. They were elected in a process that was completed last week.
A press communique on Wednesday said that Youth Congress president Vikrant Bhuria had annulled the election.
Along with the BJP workers, their "supporters" who voted for them in the Youth Congress organisational polls were also expelled from the party.
The embarrassing affair for the Youth Congress has given the MP BJP and Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha cause to question the transparency and fairness of the Youth Congress polls.
Both workers later claimed that, despite them moving to the BJP in support of Scindia, they were later elected to Youth Congress posts.
The Youth Congress, however, alleged that Singhai and Sharma had 'infiltrated' the poll process with an intention to defame the organisation.
Singhai and Sharma maintained that they had asked their nominations for the posts, filed before them shifting to BJP, to be cancelled. This was not done and they got votes too.
Youth Congress state secretary Vivek Tiwari, however, said that the workers had deliberately not withdrawn their nominations and had gotten some supporters—who they had made members of Youth Congress—to vote for them with a view to defame the poll process.
Tiwari also said that those who were deliberately made members by Singhai and Sharma as part of this conspiracy were also expelled by the Youth Congress.
Meanwhile, the president of the MP Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, Abhilash Pande, questioned the entire Youth Congress poll process and said that it seemed that the Congress did not have enough workers of its own and thus were electing members of other parties to organisational posts. He also said that the focus of Congress on dynasty politics had become clear with the election of Vikrant Bhuria—who is the son of MLA and ex-union minister Kantilal Bhuria—as the state president of Youth Congress.
