How Congress is desperately trying to save CM Kamal Nath’s govt in Madhya Pradesh

Many in the Congress feel the attempts being made now are a typical case of 'too little, too late' and might not be enough.

File image of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath | Photo: ANI

Bhopal: From unleashing its best bets and activating its team of the usual troubleshooters to keeping its flock together in ‘safehouses’, devising counter-offers for defectors and reaching out to their families as well as trying to break some BJP legislators — a desperate Congress is doing it all to keep its Kamal Nath-led government in Madhya Pradesh afloat. But it’s a task that, according to its own leaders, looks increasingly difficult.

With senior leader and former Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia quitting the party to join the BJP — and 22 Congress MLAs also resigning — the future of the Congress government in the state has been thrown into uncertainty. The Congress has 114 MLAs in the 230-member state assembly.

But not one to give up without a fight, Kamal Nath is frantically attempting to devote all possible resources and strategies to keep his throne intact, including reaching out to some MLAs personally. In a meeting of all MLAs and other stakeholders held at the chief minister’s residence in Bhopal Tuesday evening, it was decided to send the Congress legislators to Jaipur for safekeeping and to prevent any further poaching by the BJP.

At around noon Wednesday, 80 legislators flocked into two buses to leave for the airport from the CM residence, from where they were flown to Jaipur. The party claims to have 14 more MLAs with it, who have for now been kept in Bhopal and deputed to carry out different tasks.

With Home Minister Amit Shah’s shrewd abilities and the BJP’s resources to battle, it could be an uphill task for the Congress.

The troubleshooting team

Of the 22 Congress MLAs who have resigned, 19 have been housed in Bengaluru — the other three are in Bhopal — under BJP Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa’s close watch. According to highly-placed sources in the Madhya Pradesh Congress, the party’s go-to man D.K. Shivakumar — who was Wednesday made the Congress’ Karnataka unit chief — has been assigned the task of trying to reach out to these MLAs in an attempt to woo them back. However, Shivakumar’s attempts have not been particularly successful with the BJP keeping the MLAs closely guarded.

“D.K. Shivakumar, known for his abilities to negotiate through such situations, has been put in-charge of managing the defectors. But given it is a BJP-ruled state and the CM has an iron grip, even he hasn’t been particularly successful. Kamal Nath is in direct and routine touch with him,” said a senior Congress leader, who did not wish to be identified.

Kamal Nath is also in constant touch with senior Congress leader and interim president Sonia Gandhi’s closest confidante Ahmed Patel, sources say. Patel is advising the CM on how to manage the situation and what offers to make to tempt MLAs to return to the Congress fold. Patel himself is in regular contact with Sonia Gandhi.

In Madhya Pradesh, the CM has been in endless meetings with various stakeholders, particularly former CM Digvijaya Singh.

“Singh is fully backing Nath’s attempt to keep the government running. He may be unpopular among voters but has a better grip over the organisation and party workers, which can prove to be useful for Nath,” the Congress leader added.

Senior Congress leaders Mukul Wasnik, Harish Rawat and Deepak Babaria are in Bhopal to closely monitor the situation and help the chief minister. Two cabinet ministers — Sajjan Singh Verma who is close to Kamal Nath and Govind Singh who is in Digvijaya Singh’s camp — have been deputed to be in touch with all Congress MLAs and may be asked to fly to Bengaluru soon.

Meanwhile, the CM had himself tried to reach out to some of the vulnerable MLAs. This, however, has not proved to be particularly effective.

“Last Monday, Nath asked MLA Aidal Singh Kansana to come and meet him, but he refused. The next morning, the CM himself reached Kansana’s residence but was told the MLA was out. Last evening, Kansana resigned from the party, which shows how the top leadership in the state is losing grip over its team,” said another senior Congress leader, also on condition of anonymity.

The strategy

To begin with, the idea is to try and speak to the defectors in Bengaluru and make counter-offers. Following Scindia’s resignation, Kamal Nath had written to MP Governor Lalji Tandon seeking the sacking of six cabinet ministers close to the former Guna MP.

With these positions visibly vacant, the Congress hopes to tempt back some defectors with the promise of ministerial berths as well as other powerful positions.

“We want to convey to the 22 MLAs that we have ministerial positions empty and whoever returns will be given something. For those who can’t be accommodated in the cabinet, we are trying to promise powerful positions in corporations etc,” said the first leader quoted above.

Meanwhile, the party and particularly the trio of Wasnik-Rawat-Babaria are in touch with the defectors’ families in MP in an attempt to influence them and reach out to the MLAs.

The Congress is laying more emphasis on the first-time MLAs who have defected because it believes they are more amenable to returning than the older lot.

The other tricky situation is to keep the four Independents and the three MLAs from Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party in its fold. Sources say while the Congress is confident of the Independents’ support, the SP-BSP situation “could be tricky since they might want to shift to the side towards which they see the scales tilting”.

The Congress also hopes to be able to break some vulnerable BJP MLAs — particularly Sharad Kaul and Narayan Tripathi — who have been known to switch parties and even went against the BJP line to vote in favour of a Congress government bill in the state Assembly last July.

The role of the Governor and Speaker in such a situation will be most crucial and the Congress is hoping to buy some time through the latter — N.P. Prajapati. For this, legal and constitutional experts have been roped in and were also present during the meeting at Kamal Nath’s residence Tuesday evening.

‘Too little, too late’

Many in the Congress, however, feel the attempts being made now are a typical case of “too little, too late” and might not suffice. They say the fact that its MLAs had to be shifted to another Congress-ruled state, despite the party being in power in MP, shows “how precarious the situation is and how under confident the leadership”.

“This was long-coming. Scindia has been upset for years. But in the last 14 months since the 2018 assembly polls, he has clearly shown signs of rebellion. In a letter to Rahul Gandhi a few months ago, Scindia had complained about the Nath government — especially the inability to waive farmer loans as promised, CM’s high-handed approach of not interacting enough with party workers and failing to lift off the legal cases from several workers and leaders. That is when the high command should have stepped in to narrow the schism,” said a third Congress source.

The very public signs of disenchantment were there for all to see. According to sources, at a meeting of senior leaders, Scindia had angrily quipped that his “position in the party now was not even that of a peon who serves tea”.

Sources say Kamal Nath and Scindia barely met over the last year, even when the latter was in Bhopal. The cabinet ministers from Scindia’s camp would keep him in the loop about issues like appointments and were in constant touch — a fact that may have irked Nath.

The long-brewing resentment in the Madhya Pradesh state unit of the Congress has finally reached a crescendo and could have a spill-over effect on other states like Rajasthan as well, some leaders believe.