Madhya Pradesh minister and senior BJP leader Kailash Vijayvargiya on Sunday said the Congress’ call to voters to select the NOTA option in Indore won’t have any impact and the saffron nominee will win the May 13 elections by a margin of over 8 lakh votes.
He accused the Congress of playing “negative politics” over the last ten years.
Meanwhile, Mr Vijayvargiya said a “good man” like Kamal Nath would have been welcomed in the saffron fold had he been joining alone but some people also wanted to follow him.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is not a dustbin which will accept all the garbage, he said.
“Besides Kamal Nath, some people from Congress also wanted to cross over to the BJP in the last few days, for whom the doors of BJP should be closed,” Mr Vijayvargiya told reporters.
In the last few months, the buzz over the likely crossover of former chief minister Kamal Nath and his MP son Nakul Nath to the BJP grew louder.
On his part, the Nath senior had rejected the speculation as “media hype”.
Responding to the Congress’ appeal that voters should opt for NOTA in Indore, Mr Vijayvargiya said the campaign won’t have any impact.
“The Congress’ call for NOTA in Indore is 100 per cent negative. I am not surprised because Congress has been doing negative politics across the country over the last 10 years,” he said.
Sitting MP and BJP nominee Shankar Lalwani will win by a margin of more than 8 lakh votes in Indore, he said.
Notably, Congress was pushed out of the poll race in the Indore Lok Sabha constituency after the party candidate Akshay Kanti Bam withdrew his nomination at the last moment on April 29. He joined the BJP.
Stung by the development, the Congress has been appealing to voters to select the NOTA (None of the Above) option “to teach the BJP a lesson”.
Mr Vijayvargiya recalled when Bam had decided to join the BJP, he (Vijayvargiya) suggested that Bam could withdraw his name by sending his proposer to the District Election Office.
“But Bam told me that he wanted to go to the district election office and withdraw his nomination so that he can send a message to the Congress that he is leaving the party without any pressure,” the BJP leader claimed.
Senior BJP leader Sumitra Mahajan had raised questions over the withdrawal of Bam’s nominations.
When asked to comment, Mr Vijayvargiya said, “Tai (as Mahajan is known popularly) is our supreme leader. We all respect her. Therefore, I do not consider it appropriate to answer questions related to any of her statements.”
