NEW DELHI: In a development that evoked sharp reaction from women wrestlers who had accused former Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh of sexual harassment and held mass protests through 2023 to secure justice, the ruling BJP on Thursday denied the Kaiserganj MP renomination from the seat but fielded his son Karan Bhushan.
“India’s daughters have lost, Brij Bhushan Singh has won,” reacted Sakshi Malik, India’s first and only female wrestler to have won an Olympic medal, as the news broke that the BJP, after dilly-dallying for days, benched Bhushan only to accommodate his son in the Lok Sabha poll fray.
Sakshi, one of the ace wrestlers who had gathered at Jantar Mantar in early 2023 to protest against Bhushan, shared her outburst on X, having quit the sport earlier. “We risked our careers, slept on roads, but Bhushan was never arrested. We only sought justice. Let alone arrest, Bhushan’s son has now been given the ticket in a move that will demoralise India’s daughters. The ticket has gone in the same family. How come the nation’s government is so powerless before one individual? They want votes in the name of Lord Ram. What about the path the Lord showed?” Sakshi said.
Vinesh Phogat, another protester in the mass movement against Bhushan, endorsed X posts that slammed the BJP’s decision to field Bhushan’s son Karan as “shameful”.
The Congress also criticised the BJP for giving the ticket to Bhushan’s son. “Just when we thought that the Prajwal Revanna scandal had exposed the depths of the BJP’s depravity, they show that there are always new lows for them to fall to. They have now rewarded Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, accused of sexual harassment by many of our women wrestlers, with the ticket for his son,” Jairam Ramesh, Congress general secretary (communications), wrote on X. Ramesh said the BJP was a party with “no moral compass, led by a man whose only anchor was his desire for boundless power”.
The BJP’s decision to nominate Karan from Kaiserganj signals Brij Bhushan’s indispensability to the party’s electoral strategy in Uttar Pradesh, which sends the most MPs (80) to the Lok Sabha. Having won 64 seats in 2019, the BJP and allies are eyeing all 80 seats this year to boost their 400-plus target in the 543-member Lok Sabha.
Gonda-born Brij Bhushan (67) appears key to that equation. A six-term MP having represented Gonda, Balrampur and Kaiserganj, he was first elected to the tenth Lok Sabha in 1991 from Gonda on the BJP ticket. He has been a Samajwadi Party MP in the past and commands significant clout across key UP districts of Gonda, Balrampur, Bahraich, Shravasti and Ayodhya. The owner of a shooting range, a wrestling academy and several colleges along the Ayodhya-Gonda highway, Brij Bhushan made his political foray in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement of the 1990s.
He was among the accused in the Babri Masjid demolition case, but was acquitted of charges in 2020. Brij Bhushan’s second son Prateek is a sitting MLA from Gonda in Uttar Pradesh and his wife is an ex-MP. The BJP strongman, who has consistently denied charges of sexual harassment levelled against him by some of India’s celebrity wrestlers, has pitched the Kaiserganj Lok Sabha election as a matter of prestige. BJP sources say he himself wanted to contest but was eventually convinced to sit out in son’s favour.