# India

Entry of occultists in MP polls

Reacting to the development, the state chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, said while the BJP is seeking the blessings of people, the Congress is invoking “tantric kriyas” (sorcery) to win the polls.

Statesman News Service | Bhopal | October 19, 2023 9:15 pm

Occultists seem to have made an entry in the run up to the Madhya Pradesh assembly election. A photo has emerged of a man performing some sort of tantric rituals in front of MP Congress chief Kamal Nath’s image at a crematorium in Ujjain. According to some reports, the tantric rituals were carried out to ensure Kamal Nath becomes the chief minister of the state again.

Reacting to the development, the state chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, said while the BJP is seeking the blessings of people, the Congress is invoking “tantric kriyas” (sorcery) to win the polls. He added that while the BJP was taking its achievements and welfare schemes to the people, the Congress was indulging in such supernatural rituals.

Chouhan made the statement a day after the photo of a tantric doing some sort of ritual with Nath’s photo in front, at Charkathirth crematorium in Ujjain made rounds on the social media.

“We are reaching out to the people and informing them of our works while some people in the crematorium are doing tantric kriyas. Is this a democracy? In democracy, the public is worshipped in a real sense. It is the way to win people’s faith, serve people and for the development of the state and welfare of the public,” Chouhan said while, along with MP BJP chief V D Sharma, flagging off high-tech campaign raths to reach out to the people in all 230 state assembly constituencies.

During the 2019 Lok Sabha election, a self-styled spiritual guru called Mirchi Baba had performed an elaborate ritual with a burning urn on his head and several burning pots around him, as he sat on the ground in the scorching heat in Bhopal. He had performed the tantric rituals claiming they would ensure a huge win for Congress Lok Sabha candidate Digvijaya Singh from the Bhopal Lok Sabha seat.

First-time BJP candidate, Pragya Singh Thakur, drubbed Digvijaya Singh, a former chief minister of the state, by more than 3.5 lakh votes in that election.