Former CM has backed the nine-time MP to lead the party’s charge against the BJP instead of Jyotiraditya Scindia, who led the losing campaign in 2013.
New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Kamal Nath has emerged as the frontrunner to be the party’s chief ministerial face in Madhya Pradesh, which will go to the polls at the end of the year.
Former chief minister Digvijaya Singh has informed Congress president Rahul Gandhi about his preference for Kamal Nath over Jyotiraditya Scindia, two leaders privy to the discussions told ThePrint.
Singh told Gandhi that it could be the last chance for Nath, 71, who has the stature and experience, as well as the resources to lead the party to victory. Scindia is young and bright, and can afford to wait for his turn, the former chief minister is learnt to have told Gandhi.
It will be difficult for the new Congress president to give the short shrift to two party veterans who enjoy considerable political clout, political observers said.
Singh is a two-term chief minister, whose stature as a mass leader has been questioned by his political adversaries since he left state politics to move to Delhi after his government was voted out in 2003. But the throngs of party workers and common people who joined him in his 3,000 km ‘Narmada Parikrama’— circumambulation of the holy river on foot over six months – served to reaffirm his mass base.
The need for a face
Singh’s decision to lend his weight to Nath’s candidacy is likely to tilt the scales in favour of the nine-term Member of Parliament from Chhindwara, although the Congress president is yet to take a final call. A senior functionary said Gandhi hasn’t even made up his mind on whether to project a CM candidate, but the need to do so is increasingly being felt by the party leadership.
Singh himself was seen as one of the contenders but has opted out of the race, maintaining that he does not want any party post in the state and that his role will be limited to mobilising people to ensure the Congress party’s return to power.
Scindia, the young MP from Guna, was appointed the party’s campaign committee chief in the 2013 assembly elections, a move that virtually projected him as the CM candidate. The move had come late in the campaign though, barely 11 weeks before polling day. Scindia ran a spirited campaign and was getting enthusiastic response from the people, especially the youth, but a faction-ridden Congress gifted a third successive term to the BJP’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
Congress smells an opportunity
With the BJP facing 15 years of anti-incumbency in the state, the Congress fancies its chances in the polls, expected to be held in November. Several districts of the state were on the boil last year after the killing of six farmers in police firing at Mandsaur; they were protesting against low remunerative prices of their crops and demanding a loan waiver.
In the urban civic polls in January this year, the Congress and the BJP won nine bodies each, an improvement of five for the opposition party over the last elections. The ruling party got another jolt the following month when the opposition party won bypolls in two assembly constituencies — Mungaoli and Kolaras.
On Wednesday, BJP president Amit Shah appointed Rakesh Singh, the party’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha, as president of the Madhya Pradesh unit, a day after securing the resignation of Nand Kumar Chauhan. The move betrayed growing anxiety in the ruling camp about its loosening grip in a state that sends 29 members to the Lok Sabha. The BJP won 27 of these seats in 2014.
The Congress’s successive losses in Madhya Pradesh have been attributed to unending internecine wars that have afflicted the party since the 1980s. With the two veterans — Nath and Singh — joining hands, Congress leaders in New Delhi expect a united show.