By L S Herdenia
BHOPAL: When Ashutosh Tiwari – the BJP candidate for the by-elections in the Datia Assembly constituency in Madhya Pradesh – went to file his nomination papers on Monday, he was accompanied by chief minister Mohan Yadav, deputy chief minister Jagdish Devda, state BJP President Hemant Khandelwal and a host of top BJP leaders, including former Home Minister Narottam Mishra, who was widely presumed to be BJP’s natural choice for candidature from the constituency, but was denied ticket at the last moment.
The BJP had to put up this massive show of strength as part of a damage-control exercise in the wake of the violence and mayhem unleashed by Mishra supporters in Datia after it was announced on Friday (July 10, 2026) that not Mishra, but a little-known RSS leader, Ashutosh Tiwari, would be the party’s candidate.
Immediately thereafter, Mishra supporters went on a rampage. They got all the shops in Datia – a district headquarters town bordering Uttar Pradesh – shut and blocked the National Highway leading from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh to Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh. The protest brought traffic on the key Delhi–South India corridor to a complete halt for nearly 10 hours. More than 50,000 vehicles, including cars, buses and trucks, were stranded on the highway, forcing thousands of passengers to spend the entire night on the road.
The protesters threw stones at cops and vandalised vehicles. At least eight policemen, including the Superintendent of Police (SP) of the district, were injured. Almost all BJP office-bearers from the booth-level to the district level in Datia stepped down from their posts in protest and warned that they would resign from the membership of the party if the BJP leadership did not revoke its decision.
Alarmed by this near-revolt – the fiercest in recent memory – the BJP leadership switched to the firefighting mode. Mishra was asked to rein-in his followers while making it clear that the party won’t backtrack on its decision. And the district administration was asked to act tough with the protesters.
The chief minister rushed to Datia, where he addressed party leaders and workers, counselling them to maintain unity. Mishra, too, declared that he would campaign for Tiwari.
Narottam Mishra (66) is a six-time MLA and has served as a minister for almost 16 years. He was the Home Minister in the Shivraj Singh Government when the state went to general elections in 2023.
Having returned from Datia thrice consecutively from 2008 to 2018, he was fielded by the party as its candidate from the same constituency in the 2023 Assembly Elections. Though the BJP won the elections with a massive majority, Narottam lost to Congress’s Rajendra Bharti.
On April 2 this year, a Delhi court sentenced Bharti to three years’ imprisonment in a cheating case. This was a godsend for Mishra. The office of the state assembly secretariat was opened at midnight on the same day and a notification declaring Bharti as disqualified and Datia seat as vacant was issued.
Bharti moved the Madhya Pradesh High Court and then the Supreme Court against his disqualification but did not get any relief. An elated Mishra began campaigning in Datia, assured that he would be fielded by the party. He addressed public meetings, held strategy sessions with his supporters and urged the voters to ‘forgive and forget’ had done anything wrong in the past.
The state BJP unit sent a single-name panel to Delhi. And the single name was of Mishra’s. However, much to his shock, the national leadership ditched him, opting for a low-profile RSS functionary.
Why this was done is anybody’s guess. Among the speculations, one is that the party did not want another power centre to emerge in the state. For, if Mishra got elected, he would have to be accommodated into the council of ministers with an important portfolio. The Madhya Pradesh BJP already has a host of heavyweight leaders – former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, chief minister Mohan Yadav, former Union Agriculture minister and Vidhan Sabha Speaker Narendra Singh Tomar. Mishra would have joined the list, adding another power centre.
Another explanation is that surveys conducted by the central leadership indicated that Mishra was not on a strong wicket. And the third explanation is that the decision is the outcome of the party’s national leadership’s penchant for springing surprises. There is a long list of them, including picking chief ministers for Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan and even the national BJP chief.
Be that as it may, Datia bypolls have become more interesting than just another poll that would not change anything – no matter which way the results go. The Congress has fielded Ghanshyam Singh, a member of the former royal family of Datia, as its candidate. Datia will vote on July 30 and the votes will be counted on August 3. (IPA Service)
