Man who felled Raghavji revels

None of that worked. His moment in the sun,however,did finally come this week when he declared he was the brain behind the sleaze CD that compelled the BJP to expel Raghavji,Madhya Pradesh’s finance minister of 10 years,and the government to remove him.

“Mohan Bhagwat must be asking Rajnath Singh who Shivshankar Pateria is,” he chuckles today,confident that his exploits are the subject of discussion in the top RSS and BJP leadership. Besides,he claims,he has received offers from rival political parties to join them. “I will always remain with the BJP,’’ he says recalling the RSS background of his father.

He is unfazed by the fact that the BJP has acted against him too. “The BJP has only suspended me,not terminated my membership,” he says.

Pateria,who declared he orchestrated the making of the CD by guiding and providing a spy camera to the victim of alleged sodomy by Raghavji,is gloating in what he sees as a whistleblower’s image,and says he was driven by a mission to cleanse the BJP of dirty elements.

A former chairman of the state forest development corporation,he had begun as a sarpanch,in Mandi Bamora in 1988. The only assembly election he contested was against Chouhan in 2008,on a ticket given by Uma Bharti’s then party Bharatiya Janshakti. He got about 2,500 votes. “I was not willing to contest but was forced by Uma Bharti,who needed a candidate who wouldn’t sell himself,” he says of his defeat.

He has been known to switch loyalties. After Bharti was thrown out of BJP and as a consequence he lost the chairmanship of the forest body in the end of 2005,he refused to vacate the official bungalow and police had to be deployed to evict him. In Bharti’s party,he took on a vice-president and was thrown out. He then flirted with the idea of contesting the election for the BSP,Mayawati’s party. Denied a ticket,he returned to Bharti’s party and was made to take on Chouhan at Budhni constituency.

Over the last three months,he cultivated the domestic help at Raghavji’s bungalow,where he was a frequent visitor,and got the CD made to pull down a man he oncecalled his mentor. “He did not help me,the BJP did not give me any work,” he says.

He says he keeps himself very busy by reading newspapers,sitting through assembly debates,watching television and regularly turning up at art and literary events. The postgraduate in commerce insists he is not reckless but listens to his conscience,and often pays the price. “I am at peace with myself,” Pateria says.

The BJP has dismissed him as insignificant,giving rise to talk that he may have acted at someone else’s instance to publicly take on a leader as senior as Raghavji. “Because I am not moneyed,people are alleging that it’s a paid job. It’s not,’’ he avers.

He quotes another Urdu couplet to say that one does not get everything in life. Incidentally,Raghavji too has a liking for poetry; he would quote couplets in all his budget speeches.