Jaipur: Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) leader and Nagaur MP-elect Hanuman Beniwal on Friday expressed resentment over not being called to INDIA bloc meetings before and after the Lok Sabha poll result, and asked when small parties from the south could be invited, why not him.
Hanuman Beniwal, who won the Nagaur seat in Rajasthan by defeating BJP candidate and former Congress MP Jyoti Mirdha by 42,225 votes, said he would remain in the INDIA bloc. He claimed that Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge spoke to him over phone on Thursday and said a mistake was made.
If such a mistake was made, then it was a blunder, Hanuman Beniwal told reporters in Nagaur. "Meetings (of the INDIA bloc) were held twice, on June 1 and June 5 (after results were announced on June 4). I was not invited to these. Why was I not invited? When small parties from the south were invited, why was Hanuman Beniwal not invited?" he asked.
Out of the 25 parliamentary seats in the state, the BJP won 14 and INDIA bloc parties 11 -- Congress eight and CPI (M), RLP and BAP one each. "Every single MP is needed in the country and people like Hanuman Beniwal are forgotten. The Congress should celebrate that the INDIA bloc has got 11 seats in Rajasthan but did we (the RLP) have no role in bringing the 11 (seats)? I got three lakh votes of the Congress but 20 lakh votes of the RLP went to the Congress, due to which they got so many seats," he claimed.
Hanuman Beniwal also alleged that the Congress got RLP leader Ummedaram Beniwal to quit the party in Barmer and made him its candidate. "On one hand they were talking of alliance with me and on the other hand they were breaking my party. They were doing two things simultaneously," he said.
Ummedaram Beniwal was the Congress' candidate from the Barmer Lok Sabha seat. He defeated Union Minister and BJP candidate Kailash Chaudhary. When asked about his further course of action, Hanuman Beniwal said he will not join the BJP-led NDA -- which is set to form government at the Center with Narendra Modi as prime minister -- and would stay in the INDIA bloc.
He also said he will launch an agitation against the short-term army recruitment Agnipath scheme. Congress leader and former Rajasthan deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot said those part of the INDIA bloc, will continue to be in the alliance, and expressed confidence in the bloc's potential to attract more parties in the future into the coalition.
"Everyone who was in the alliance is still in the alliance. I think that in the coming time, more parties will join our alliance," he told reporters in Ajmer when asked about the resentment of the Hanuman Beniwal. Hanuman Beniwal won the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Nagaur as an RLP candidate in an alliance with the BJP but he left the NDA in December 2020 over the farm laws issue.
