Rajasthan BJP leader expelled for criticising party over Jagdeep Dhankhar, Satya Pal Malik: Who is Krishan Kumar Janu?

Indian Express

7 hours ago

Farmer, journalist, Jat Mahasabha leader, ABVP and VHP leader, BJP candidate and party spokesperson. Krishan Kumar Janu, 55, has donned many hats in his nearly four-decade political career, during most of which he has been associated with the Sangh in various capacities.
But it was for the first time on August 8 that Janu – the surname representing his Jat gotra – hit national headlines after the Rajasthan BJP expelled him for six years for targeting the party over its treatment of former Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik and ex-Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, both Jats, in a video that went viral. Janu in the video is seen slamming the party's Jat leaders while urging them to speak up.
'I have a habit of speaking freely and I felt that the party was in the wrong, be it the Dhankhar case or with Malik. So, I spoke and wrote against this politics of prejudice and vendetta. If Jats in the BJP can't speak, then what is the point of them staying in the party? What good can they do for the community if they can't speak out? I had asked questions of Jat leaders in the BJP, be it the MPs or MLAs and not the BJP. But my expulsion means that the party needs deaf and dumb people, not the ones who speak up,' Janu told The Indian Express.
Terming the move not to accord Dhankhar a farewell as 'shameful', Janu said, 'It is the limit of shamelessness when the party is exacting revenge upon the dead and not giving him (Malik) the Tricolour as a shroud. Our culture says that once you are dead, all the disputes and all the fights are over. You are humiliating someone who has been an MLA, minister, party national vice president and Governor in multiple states. It is the definition of a narrow mindset. It is very sad.'
While his comments led him to face the axe from the BJP, Janu's family traces its antecedents to freedom fighter Sardar Harlal Singh, also a Jat leader and the first president of Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee in independent India. Unlike most of his family members, Janu chose to follow the Sangh ideology in 1986.
He was a full-time member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) for about ten years and was its Sangathan Mantri, mostly in the Shekhawati region, as well as in Bikaner. He then rose to the post of seh-mantri at the state level and was a part of the ABVP's National Executive Council for four years.
He also ran a departmental store and EYE TV news channel next door in Churu, and also contested as a BJP candidate for Jhunjhunu's Mandawa Assembly seat in 2003, but stood fifth. Janu says that veteran BJP leader Rajendra Rathore was against him ever since his student politics days and opposed him when he got a ticket too.
Janu then worked with the Vishva Hindu Parishad for about five years, and was the samrasta seh-prabhari for the Jaipur region – the other two being Jodhpur and Chittorgarh in Rajasthan – where he was tasked with ensuring harmony between castes and communities, including Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs).
Subsequently, he was relieved by the VHP and sent to the BJP as its political appointee. The BJP first made him a media panellist and then a spokesperson in 2022.
'I would like to thank the party for rewarding me with an expulsion for speaking the truth. If my party is going in the wrong direction, I will continue to question it. As I have experience in the media, I will again join them and put my points across. I will continue to bring out the visangati (inconsistencies) within the party,' he said after his expulsion.
Claiming that the BJP will see the consequences of its actions in the panchayat polls later this year, Janu said, 'It is my moral duty to make the party realise that it has made a mistake. There are things which I couldn't speak before as I was bound by party discipline, but now I will give voice to my thoughts,' he said, and questioned why he was being targeted even as leaders of other communities in the BJP were allowed to speak freely.
A Jat Mahasabha state secretary, Janu said, 'I have merely made the point of humiliation of Jat community members. If community members from the Vipra (Foundation) are post holders in the party, if (the late) Ramdas Agarwal was BJP's state president, if Karni Sena and Kshatriya Yuvak Sangh leaders also hold posts in the BJP and there are no objections or restrictions on them, the track politics of expelling a Jat community leader from the BJP… they need weak Jat leaders as showpieces. They don't need strong Jat leaders who have a hold on the ground.'
'I have nothing against the party, but vyaktivaad (person-centric) politics. Where is community leadership? If Congress's politics of nepotism is bad, then so is the BJP's person-centric politics. We made a BJP government in 2014 but by 2019, it became the 'Modi government'. A person is not important in the ideology I follow. Guruji K B Hedgewar didn't keep himself first but asked us to follow the param pavitra bhagwa dhwaj (most sacred saffron flag) as the guru, because a person's degeneration can happen anytime,' Janu said.
Claiming that BJP state president Madan Rathore recently told him to avoid writing certain things, Janu said, 'He told me that I should discuss it at an appropriate stage, but when there is none in the party, Zuckerberg's platform (Facebook) seems the most appropriate to me. There was a discussion on what I said only after reading my comments on this platform, and I was served a notice only after my comments were read on this platform.'
On whether he will join the Congress or the Jat-dominated Rashtriya Loktantrik Party, Janu said that the Congress in his hometown Jhunjhunu is ridden with the Ola family and its politics, and thus has no vacancies. As for the politics of change in the state, he said there are still about four years to go for state polls. 'Till then, I will keep forcing my community members in the party to speak up or push the community for their boycott,' he said.