Launching a veiled attack on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said here on Saturday that “the future of a party, whose leader carries a suitcase with wheels on his head, has to be deplorably bleak”.

Chouhan was referring to Rahul Gandhi’s latest ‘coolie’ avatar in which the Congress leader was seen donning a porter’s uniform, complete with a red shirt and a batch attached to it, carrying a wheeled trolley suitcase on his head at the Anand Vihar railway station in New Delhi.

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The chief minister minced no words while disapproving of the defamatory words used by BJP Lok Sabha Member Ramesh Bidhuri against a Muslim MP of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Danish Ali, on the floor of the House. He called the BJP a highly disciplined and morally upright party and said any such undignified statement is unacceptable.

Addressing media persons at a press conference in Bhopal, along with BJP MP election management committee convener Narendra Singh Tomar and MP BJP President Vishnu Dutt Sharma, Mr. Chouhan expressed strong confidence that the assembly polls in MP would spring an unprecedented result in BJP’s favour and the ruling party would register a biggest-ever victory in the state.

On the ongoing ‘Sanatan Dharma’ row, Mr. Chouhan said the people would teach a lesson to the Congress that is one of the leading parties of the INDI alliance, whose leaders defame the Sanatan Dharma and use highly objectionable words against it.

The MP CM said that the ongoing ‘Jan Aakrosh yatra’ (public anger march) by the Opposition Congress in the state was actually turning out to be a depiction of the anger of people against Congress and the bitterness of Congress leaders and workers against each other only.

“We received the love and blessings of people, so the BJP is taking out the ‘Jan Aashirwad Yatra’ (public blessing march). But the Congress is taking out a ‘jan aakrosh yatra’ because that is all they have received from the people,” Mr. Chouhan averred.

He further said, “During their yatra, Congressmen are fighting with each other and even guns have come out at some places,”

Mr Chouhan claimed that the condition of the Congress was such that the party was not using its former CM Digvijaya Singh’s photo at any place. Such a situation, he said, arose because the people of MP have not yet forgotten the terrible times they faced when Digvijaya Singh was the CM from 1993 to 2003.

“Mr Bantaadhar had totally ruined Madhya Pradesh on all fronts during his reign as CM,” Mr Chouhan said referring to Digvijaya Singh’s reign.

He also castigated Kamal Nath, who was the Congress CM of MP from 2018 to 2020. “The people of MP are extremely angry with the Congress, as Kamal Nath stopped all the welfare schemes initiated by the BJP for the poor, women, tribals, and other economically weaker sections of the society,” he alleged.

After becoming the CM, he said, “Kamal Nath discontinued several of our welfare schemes including the sambal yojana, housing scheme for poor, laptops distribution to meritorious students, financial assistance to newly married women, nutritious supplement scheme for tribal women, and all those actions have resulted in a total outrage in the people against the Congress.”

Chouhan, Tomar, and Sharma unanimously claimed that the BJP’s ‘Jan Aashirwad Yatra’ has been extremely successful. The three leaders hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the passage of the women’s Reservation Bill during the special session of Parliament.

The BJP trio also claimed that the PM’s scheduled arrival in Bhopal on Deen Dayal Upadhyay’s birth anniversary on 25 September, to address a BJP workers’ mega convention to mark the conclusion of the ‘jan aashirwad yatra’, would be the biggest-ever meeting of any political party’s workers. They said the convention would prove to be a milestone in ensuring the BJP’s thumping win in the MP assembly elections this November.