‘Break-up with JJP a pretence, shows BJP knows how bad things are’: Former BJP MP Brijendra Singh

On March 10, IAS-turned-politician Brijendra Singh (51), the sitting Lok Sabha MP from Haryana’s Hisar, left the BJP to join the Congress. The son of senior politician Chaudhary Birender Singh, who also resigned from his Lok Sabha membership, spoke toThe Indian Express about recent political changes in Haryana and the possible outcome in the upcoming elections. Excerpts:

The way things are, it is ‘noora kushti (pretence of a fight)’ between the BJP and Jannayak Janta Party.They (the JJP) did it in the Assembly too, effectively bailing out the government on the confidence motion. If the alliance had really ended, they (JJP MLAs) should have voted against the confidence motion, or the party should have left it to the MLAs to do as they wished. Instead, it issued a three-line whip asking them not to be present when the confidence motion came up. In their (JJP) Hisar programme too, it was more or less admitted that they are still in cahoots. I don’t believe the alliance is broken. Behind the curtains, it is still the same parties playing a game.

Early in my tenure as an MP, I got uncomfortable being in the BJP. There was somehow not much of a meeting ground on intellectual or ideological terms. But still, since I had been elected on their ticket, I had to wait it out. But then, things started happening that convinced me more than ever that it couldn’t last very long. The farmers’ agitation, the Agnipath scheme and the issue of female wrestlers — all these things were piling up, and there were many other issues as well. At the state-level, of course, there was this issue of the BJP-JJP alliance.

The agitation, especially the one in 2020-21, has already gone deep into the psyche of farmers, especially in Northwest India, and is