Madhya Pradesh Minister , one of the spearheads of India’s Operation Sindoor against Pakistan, created a nationwide outrage.
Apart from the political condemnation, Shah was also reprimanded by the Madhya Pradesh High Court as well as the Supreme Court for his statement.
At a recent event, Vijay Shah stirred a row after he said that the Prime Minister had sent a “sister from the same community” as those in Pakistan to avenge the April 22 terror attack in Kashmir’s Pahalgam.
The Supreme Court is going to hear the controversial statement case against Shah on Monday. The
Kunwar Vijay Shah is an eight-time MLA. In the year 1990, he won the election for the first time on a BJP ticket and has been winning elections continuously since then.
In 2003, Vijay Shah joined the Cabinet for the first time when he was made the state Culture Minister. In 2008, Shah became the Minister of the Tribal Department. He became a minister in 2013 too, but had to resign after his controversial statement about Sadhna Singh, the wife of the then Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
After the fall of the Kamal Nath government, when Chouhan became the chief minister for the fourth time in 2020, Vijay Shah was made the Forest Minister. After the formation of the Mohan Yadav government in 2023, Vijay Shah was handed charge of the Tribal Affairs Department.
Let us now understand as to why Vijay Shah got the ministerial post in every BJP government and why it is not easy for the party to demand his resignation:
- Vijay Shah is an MLA from Harsud assembly seat.
- He won the election from Harsud for the first time in the year 1990. After this, he has won the assembly elections eight times in 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018, and 2023.
- Vijay Shah belongs to the Rajgond subcaste of Gond tribals.
- Rajgond is considered to be the highest subcaste among Gond tribals.
- For this reason, the tribal community of Nimar still holds Vijay Shah as their true representative.
- The total tribal population in Madhya Pradesh is around 1.6 crore, out of which the number of Gond tribals alone is around 56 lakh.
- The percentage of Gond tribal population in the total tribal population of the state is 35.5 per cent.
- The influence of Vijay Shah’s Rajgond subcaste can be gauged from the fact that his family has influence in many tribal-dominated areas, including Harda, Khandwa, Burhanpur, and Betul.
- For this reason, the entire Shah family has been active in politics for a long time.
- Vijay Shah’s brother Sanjay Shah was an MLA from Timarni.
- Shah’s nephew Abhijit Shah is still a Congress MLA from Timarni.
- As far as the tribal-dominated assembly seats in Madhya Pradesh go, about 47 assembly seats are reserved for the tribal class.
- Statistics testify that its performance on the assembly seats reserved for the tribal class has not been very encouraging since the year 2018.
Bhopal’s senior journalist, Nitendra Sharma, says that the BJP has Vijay Shah as a big tribal face, who was successful in winning elections even in 1993, 1998 and 2018 when the Congress government was formed, and the influence of Vijay Shah in tribal-dominated areas is probably forcing the saffron party to refrain from taking direct action against him.
Another reason could be that the BJP does not want to give credit to the opposition parties, so perhaps no decision is being taken on the resignation. The BJP had earlier taken action for indiscipline against Akash Vijayvargiya and Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur.
The same Vijay Shah had to resign in 2013 after commenting on Sadhna Singh, but keeping in mind the tribal vote bank, he was given back the ministerial post a few months later.
The BJP may also be apprehensive considering that after resigning, if Vijay Shah leaves the MLA post in protest, then not only will it lose a big tribal face, it is also likely to affect the party’s performance in tribal-dominated areas.