By HariharSwarup
For those who have known Union Minister Prahlad Singh Patel, his name figured in Pegasus list, along with Railway & Railways and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, came as a surprise. “After all, he is someone who puts it all out there— where was the need to know more? Says a senior BJP leader who has known Patel since he was MOS for coal in Atal Behari Vajpayee’s cabinet between 1999 and 2004.
In the weeks before Pegasus row, the 61-year-old was in another list; the much talked about cabinet reshuffle, where the five time Lok Sabha MP and BJP leader for two decades was moved from the ministry of Culture and tourism, where he held independent charge, to the post of a junior minister in Food Processing Jal Shakti departments—a shift that many saw as demotion.
Yet, it’s his presence in the Pegasus list, along with as many as 15 members and associates including, his wife Pushplata, media advisor Nitin Tripathi and even cook and gardener that raised eye brows about this seemingly extraordinary interest in him. His phone was added to the list around mid-2019, soon after he was inducted into the Modi cabinet.
After keeping silent for a few days, Patel said he was as surprised at the development. “ I never felt that the government was snooping on me. I am not such a big man,” he said.
Patel has had his share of political upheavals during his rise from the students’ union President representing the BJP’s Yuva Morcha in Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur University to a minister in two Union Councils—Vajpayee’s and Modi’s.
He first entered politics as the district in-charge of the BJP youth wing elections in 1989 as an independent. The win soon gave him an entry into the BJP.
In 2003, the BJP came to power in MP, Uma Bharti uprooting the decade old Congress government led by Digvijaya Singh. Patel emerged as her closest confidant, with both prominent leaders of Lodh community. Soon, Patel had moved to Delhi as Coal Minister in the Vajpayee-led government.
When Bharti, facing riots charges in the Hubli flag case, fell out with the BJP after the BJP picked Shivraj Singh Chouhan as CM and floated her own party—Bhartiya Jan Shakti Party in 2005, Patel walked out with her, a rebellion that marked him out as a man in the anti-Chouhan camp.
“Patel left the party against advice of senior leaders like Arun Jaitley who tried to assure him that he was next in line for the top post in MP”, said a senior officer.
Not long after, Patel had a bitter parting of ways with Bharti over control of their fledging party. He returned to the BJP in 2009 and in 2014, won his fourth term as MP from Damoh. He retained his seat in 2019.
In his five-term as MP, Patel has also represented two Lok Sabha constituencies – Seoni twice, and Balaghat once. In 2004 he contested against Kamal Nath from Chhindwara but lost.
His friends and political opponents attribute this—constituency hopping to Patel’s “tendency to pick up fights” with local BJP leaders from wherever he contested.
He has an abrasive nature, says Lakhan Singh Ghangoria, the Congress MLA from Jabalpur East and a former Minister. Ghangoria and Patel were student leaders at Rani Durgawati University in Jabalpur from where both graduated in 1982 with a BSc. “But we shared no bitterness. After fighting each other during the day, we shared a meal at night”, recollects Ghangoria.
“He does not seem to have changed all from those days as a student leader—he continues to practice the same kind of politics”, says a senior BJP leader in MP.
The Patels hold considerable clout in Narasinghpur where family has business interests in sand mining. In June 2019 Patel’s son Prabal and his younger brother Jamal Singh, Patel’s son Monu were booked for attempt to murder over a fight with a rival sand mining group. Jalan Singh, a BJP MLA from Narasinghpur, too faces murder and rioting cases.
In March, this year Patel undertook a symbolic 75-Km Pad Yatra as part of India@75, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project, which of flagged of by PM himself. The same month President Ramnath Kovind visited Damoh at Patel’s behest for a tribal welfare programme. Patel was among the key campaigners for the BJP in the West Bengal Assembly election, and while the party lost, it fared well in North Bengal, an area which Patel was handling, winning 24 of 42 seats.
Patel’s standing appears to have taken a beating with the BJP losing the May 2021 byelection from Damoh by over 17,000 votes to the Congress.
While some believe Patel was moved out of the Culture Ministry as a fall out of this loss, others wonder at this, given how he hardly took a step out of turn in the post. “He got a lot done that suited the Sangh narrative, be it announcing Rakhigarh as an iconic tourist site, or funding Haryana’s Krishna Circuit Project or fire fighting for the Central Vista Project”, says an RSS functionary. (IPA Service)
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