Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Feb 17: Within a span of three days, second former Congress chief minister is all set to switch over to the BJP justifying the BJP allegation that the Congressmen cannot stay without power for long.
After the former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan, the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath, who in the November, 2023, state Assembly elections managed to spoil the Congress chances by misleading the party, is now considering to shift to the BJP.
Though Mr Nath, who arrived in Delhi on Saturday afternoon reportedly to meet the BJP leaders to clear his entry in the party, has not yet made any such announcement, but he is believed to have conveyed to the Congress leadership that he was “very unhappy” with the party at his present state of affairs.
He has also claimed that the voters in his Chhindwara constituency, which he represented as an MP nine times, wanted him to join the BJP to ensure development of the area on fast track. Apparently, he is worried that if he stayed on in the Congress, he or his son Nakul Nath, who is currently the sitting MP from Chhindwara, is certain to be defeated by the BJP rival in the coming Parliamentary elections. Nakul Nath is also expected to join the BJP along with his father.
Nakul Nath allegedly dropped Congress from his bio on social media, which further added to the speculation that the father-son duo were planning to quit the Congress in preference to the BJP. The veteran Congress leader, however, said his “son never had Congress in his bio.”
Sources close to Kamal Nath said while he had not resigned from the party yet, he was unhappy with what was happening there and feels that it was not the same organisation that he had joined over four decades ago. The sources said he had been told by the MP BJP chief VD Sharma that he was welcome in the BJP.
“Kamal Nath has conveyed his unhappiness to the Congress leadership. He feels that Rahul Gandhi is busy with the Bharat Jodo Nyaya Yatra and the party is now being run by the likes of senior leaders Jairam Ramesh, KC Venugopal and Randeep Surjewala,” he said.
When the sources were asked whether the cause of Mr Nath’s unhappiness was that he was not nominated for the Rajya Sabha polls, they said that was not true. The former chief minister, they said, had pushed for Ashok Singh’s nomination from Madhya Pradesh and did not want senior leader Meenakshi Natarajan, who was reportedly Rahul Gandhi’s pick for the Upper House.
Even if Kamal Nath did not join the BJP and stopped at quitting the Congress, Nakul Nath is almost certain to switch sides. He is likely to get the BJP ticket to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Chhindwara and the modalities of him joining the party are being worked out, sources said.
In a major blow to the Congress in MP, several leaders switched sides earlier this week. Former MLA Dinesh Ahirwar and Congress District President from Vidisha Rakesh Katare joined the BJP on February 12. Mr VD Sharma said the party’s doors are open for other senior Congress leaders who were upset with the party rejecting the invitation for the ‘Pran Pratishtha’ ceremony of Ayodhya’s Ram Temple.
Over the past few days, Mr Nath had been on a tour of his bastion Chhindwara, from where he had been an MP for nine terms. His son Nakul Nath won the seat in the 2019 polls, even as the BJP swept the remaining 28 seats in the State. Kamal Nath is said to be disgruntled over Rahul Gandhi being opposed to him since the party lost the assembly polls late last year. Mr Nath was replaced as the party’s Madhya Pradesh unit chief following the Assembly election rout with the BJP retaining power by even improving its tally to 163 seats in the 230-member House. The Congress managed to win just 66 seats.
Meanwhile, the Congress had also received a setback in Uttar Pradesh earlier this week when Vibhakar Shastri, grandson of former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, quit the party and joined the BJP in Lucknow.
“I will work as an ordinary member of the BJP and strive to strengthen our party and the organisation,” said Mr Shastri addressing the media at the BJP office in Lucknow. Present also were Uttar Pradesh Deputy CM Brajesh Pathak, state BJP president Bhupendra Chaudhary and other senior BJP leaders. Mr Shastri had fought three parliamentary polls on the Congress symbol in 1998, 1999 and 2009 from Fatehpur Lok Sabha constituency in U.P. and lost each time.
