Datia Assembly By-Polls: BJP Springs Surprise, Decides Not To Renominate Party Heavyweight Mishra, Fields A Greenhorn

Bhopal, July 10: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has belied all expectations to not renominate party heavyweight and former minister Narottam Misha in the July 30 by-elections to Datia Assembly constituency in Madhya Pradesh, instead fielding a greenhorn, Ashutosh Tiwari.

The move by the BJP has taken everyone in the party by surprise since Mr. Mishra has already started campaigning in the constituency, he had won consecutively for three times in 2008, 2013 and 2018 Assembly polls.

Mishra had lost the Assembly polls from the seat in 2023 to Congress candidate Rajendra Bharti in 2023.

Mr. Mishra has also procured the nomination form for the by-elections to the seat.

The seat has fallen vacant following disqualification of Mr. Bharti from the Assembly after his conviction in a bank fraud case by a Delhi court recently.

Mr. Mishra had been campaigning in the constituency ever since the by-elections to the seat was declared on July six.

A senior party functionary said that either Mishra was very confident to be renominated by the party for representing the seat three times earlier or might be trying to mount pressure on the party leadership to retain him as a candidate for the by-elections.

The candidature of Tiwari, a former block general secretary of the party, has also equally surprised the partymen.

He was chairman of the state housing board during the previous Shivraj Singh Chouhan government and was considered a loyalist of former Union minister Uma Bharti.

“I bow before the party leadership for choosing an ordinary worker like me as the BJP candidate from the Datia Assembly constituency”, Tiwari said.

Regarding the party’s decision to drop Mishra, he said that “Narottam Mishra is one of our party’s senior leaders. Whatever happened at that time (in 2023 Assembly polls) may have been due to certain circumstances. He continued to be a respected senior leader of the BJP”.

The Congress, on the other hand, is yet to declare its candidate for the by-elections.

Meanwhile, the former Congress MLA Bharti said that he would support any candidate the party chose for the seat.