As Congress’s former Varanasi MP joins BJP, why losing him may hurt the party

Former Varanasi MP Rajesh Mishra’s decision to quit the Congress and join the BJP earlier this week comes as a blow to the Opposition party that is trying to effect a turnaround in Uttar Pradesh in the coming Lok Sabha elections. The party is expected to feel Mishra’s loss in east UP.

After switching to the BJP on Tuesday, the 62-year-old called out his former party for allegedly disrespecting him. “I did not want a ticket or any post. The only thing I wanted was respect, which is important in politics. I joined the BJP as I find the work done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to uplift the country commendable. There is no match for Modiji,” Mishra told The Indian Express. He is said to have been upset with the Congress since last year because it chose Ajay Rai, another east UP leader, to head the state unit.

Mishra started his political career as a student leader in the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in the 1980s. In 1984, he was slated to contest the student union polls but could not as the union was dissolved and elections were halted for the next 10 years. In 1986, he was elected MLC as an Independent and joined the Congress the following year.

Mishra’s big political move came in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections when he defeated three-time BJP MP Shankar Prasad Jaiswal from Varanasi, a seat the BJP had won four consecutive times till then. But five years later he lost the constituency, ending a distant fourth behind former BJP president Murli Manohar Joshi, then BSP leader Mukhtar Ansari, and Rai who was then in the Samajwadi Party (SP). In 2014, the Congress denied him a ticket from Varanasi and fielded Raiagainst Modi.

Some Congress leaders in east UP said his departure would affect the INDIA bloc in the region, especially