MP polls: Kamal Nath calls Scindia ‘politically redundant’; confident of Cong win in state polls

GUNA, (PTI): Madhya Pradesh Congress chief and ex-CM Kamal Nath on Friday said his former party colleague and Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, who dethroned him two years ago, has become ”politically redundant” even in his pocket borough Gwalior, expressing confidence that his party will win the assembly elections due by the year-end.

When Scindia was there, why did they (Bharatiya Janata Party) lose the mayoral elections in Gwalior and its adjoining city Morena to the Congress last year, he asked.

Nath was in Tikamgarh, about 270 km from the state capital Bhopal, for an event.

The Congress in July 2022 won the mayoral elections in Gwalior, once the capital of the erstwhile Scindia kingdom, after 57 years, as well as in Morena where the municipal corporation was formed about eight years ago.

“If he was such a big gun, why did they lose? Just tell me. We don’t need any Scindia,” he said responding to a question on Scindia’s switch from the Congress to the BJP and its potential impact in the MP assembly polls.

Nath and Scindia had together campaigned in the 2018 state elections in which the Congress defeated the BJP by a slender margin after 15 years.

But Nath stepped down as the chief minister in March 2020 after 22 Congress MLAs loyal to Scindia resigned from the Assembly and moved to the BJP, paving the way for the return of Shivraj Singh Chouhan to the top post.

Asked why he did not make attempts to save his government then, Nath reiterated that he did not want to run his government by “striking deals”.

The former Union minister expressed confidence that the Congress would make a comeback in this year’s assembly elections and launch “welfare schemes for farmers, young people and the poor” in the state.

Despite the long tenure of the BJP government in MP, unemployment, migration and drought-related problems still plague the Bundelkhand region, including Tikamgarh, said Nath.

If the Congress comes to power, it would pay special attention to the Bundelkhand region to pull it from backwardness, he added. Hitting out at Nath, state minister Mahendra Singh Sisodia said Scindia was a missile that brought the Congress to power in the 2018 Assembly polls and also ensured it fell in March 2020.

Nath had asked if Scindia was such a big ”topp” (cannon), why did the BJP lose the local body polls in Gwalior and Morena.

”Scindia is not a topp, but a missile. This missile will also lead the BJP to victory in the 2023 Assembly polls in MP,” Sisodia, a staunch loyalist of the Union civil aviation minister, said. (PTI)