‘Cash-for-query’: former MP returns to BJP fold

The Bharatiya Janata Party has, ahead of the coming Assembly elections, quietly rehabilitated...

The Bharatiya Janata Party has, ahead of the coming Assembly elections, quietly rehabilitated former Member of Parliament Pradeep Gandhi, earlier expelled from the Lok Sabha as well as the party in the wake of the ‘cash-for- query’ scam.

“No official announcement has been made about Pradeep Gandhi’s return to the party fold. The former MP will now look after the “election control cell’ being set up by the state party headquarters”, a Chhattisgarh BJP spokesman confirmed.

The decision to entrust Gandhi with a party assignment during the polls was taken by state BJP president Vishnu Deo Sai in consultation with chief minister Dr Raman Singh and the party high command, sources said.

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Considered close to the chief minister, the former MP from Rajnandgaon was expelled from the party and the Lok Sabha in 2005 after he was caught in a sting operation accepting cash for “raising questions in the House”.

Gandhi, who won his maiden Assembly election in December 2003 , shot to prominence after he vacated his Dongergaon assembly seat to enable Chief Minister Dr Raman Singh to contest the by-poll in order to fulfill the mandatory requirement of becoming a member of the Assembly within six months of assuming office.

Reciprocating the gesture, the chief minister got him a party ticket to contest the 2004 Lok Sabha elections from Rajnandgaon constituency, which Singh had earlier represented. Though Pradeep Gandhi won the election, he had to bow out of Parliament following the cash-for-query scandal.

In the subsequent by-election for the Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha seat, the BJP candidate Leelaram Bhojwani lost to Devavrat Singh of the Congress.

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Since his expulsion Gandhi had associated himself with the Gayatri Parivar and had taken to pasting stickers containing quotes on spirituality inside trains plying between Nagpur and Bilaspur, which incidentally also pass through his former constituency Rajnandgaon. He had been active in political circles even after his expulsion and was biding his time, hoping for a comeback.