The Shah family is at the centre of two explosive controversies in Madhya Pradesh politics--one playing out in the Supreme Court and the other erupting inside the Indian National Congress. The issues are vastly different, but the political fallout is equally intense.
On one front, senior BJP leader and state cabinet minister Kunwar Vijay Shah is back in the national spotlight after the Supreme Court directed the Madhya Pradesh government to decide within two weeks on granting prosecution sanction against him for his controversial "sister of terrorists" remark aimed at Colonel Sophia Qureshi. The order has revived questions over accountability at the highest levels of the state government and raised the prospect of a criminal trial.
Simultaneously, the other face of the Shah family, Vijay Shah's nephew and first-time Congress MLA Abhijit Shah Makrai has triggered a storm within his own party. The 31-year-old legislator from Timarni is facing backlash after attending a Hindu Sammelan in Rahatgaon village of Harda district, an event linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh during its centenary year.
Abhijit Shah's presence at the event, slogans of "Jayatu Jayatu Hindu Rashtra" raised from the stage, his felicitation by religious leaders, and his decision to share the video on social media with a backdrop declaring "Hindu organization is the solution to all problems" have not gone down well with Congress leaders.
Reacting sharply, Harda District Congress spokesperson Aditya Gargav wrote to the party's state and central leadership, demanding action against the MLA. The letter questions if an elected Congress representative can participate in RSS-affiliated programmes without undermining the party's ideological stand. It also pointedly asks if Abhijit Shah aligns himself with the legacy of Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Maulana Azad or with the RSS worldview that the Congress openly opposes.
The contrast is striking. While Vijay Shah faces judicial pressure and the possibility of prosecution following Supreme Court scrutiny, his nephew finds himself in an ideological dock within his own party.
Abhijit Shah Makrai, son of the late Raja Ajay Shah of the erstwhile Makrai princely state, shot to prominence in the 2023 assembly elections by defeating his BJP uncle Sanjay Shah by a razor-thin margin of 950 votes. Ironically, a decade earlier in 2013, Abhijit had managed Sanjay Shah's election campaign and was closely associated with the BJP and the RSS before switching to the Congress.
Elected at just 31, Abhijit Shah was among the youngest MLAs in the 2023 Assembly. Barely a year into his political career, he now finds himself navigating a controversy that not only tests his own political identity but also puts the Congress leadership in a difficult spot, caught between ideology, discipline, and the realities of regional power politics.
