The longevity of the BJP-led Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, which came to power in March after toppling Kamal Nath’s Congress regime through defections, will be tested within a month. The Election Commission is likely to announce bypolls to 27 assembly constituencies of Madhya Pradesh soon.
At the face of it, a triumph for Chouhan looks imminent. In the 230-member Vidhan Sabha, the BJP has 107 MLAs. It needs to win just nine seats to touch the simple majority mark of 116. The Congress, which had won 114 seats in the December 2018 assembly polls to return to power in the state after 15 years, is down to 89 seats following the defection of 25 of its legislators to the BJP. To regain power, the Congress must now win all 27 seats on offer if it hopes to avenge the betrayal by Jyotiraditya Scindia and others. Should either side miss their target, the stability of the government will once again be in the hands of the seven MLAs—four independents, two BSP and one SP legislator—who supported the Congress until March but effortlessly moved to Chouhan’s side when Nath lost power.
Yet, despite the poll arithmetic stacked against him, Nath appears to be buoyant; assuring Congressmen and journalists alike that he intends to “make a near clean sweep of the by-elections”. Chouhan and Scindia insist the same but, unlike the Congress which has already declared 15 of its candidates, haven’t been able to finalise the BJP’s nominees for any of the seats.
In a career spanning over four decades, Nath has won nine Lok Sabha elections and an assembly poll from Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara but the septuagenarian Congress leader has never had to till the vast electoral landscape of the state. His critics—including some within the Congress—earlier mocked Nath for his inclination towards the “good life” in Lutyen’s Delhi as opposed to the rough and tumble of grassroots politics. The premature collapse of his government within 15 months of his debut in state-level politics and the ensuing bypolls has changed all that.
Since the BJP and Scindia plotted to oust Congress from power in March, Nath has rarely visited Delhi. Sources close to the former chief minister tell Outlook that Nath used the period between April and July to “minutely assess challenges in the bypoll seats and draft an election strategy”. Over the past month, the spiralling coronavirus pandemic in MP and his own health complications notwithstanding, Nath has been aggressively touring the poll-bound constituencies, addressing public gatherings, particularly in the Gwalior-Chambal region, known as the fief of the Scindia family. Of the 27 seats up for bypolls, 16 fall in the Gwalior-Chambal belt.
Congress leader and ex-CM Kamal Nath.
Nath has also been reaching out to BJP rebels, mostly former lawmakers who are uncomfortable with Jyotiraditya’s entry into the saffron party or others who feel sidelined by their party. Nath’s offer to these dissidents: “respect and a chance to avenge their humiliation in the BJP” by joining the Congress. The first list of 15 candidates declared by the Congress on September 11 gave a glimpse of this strategy. The Congress awarded tickets to three leaders who had previously been with the BJP. Sources say the next lot of candidates may also feature BJP imports alongside some Congress heavyweights and those seen as Jyotiraditya loyalists who refused to join defect to the BJP after the Gwalior royal scion’s defection.
Chouhan and the BJP, on the other hand, have been busy pacifying dissidents who see the induction of Jyotiraditya into the party along with 22 of his loyal former Congress MLAs as a threat to their own political ambitions. Some BJP stalwarts, say party sources, have made their discomfiture over the new entrants clear to the party’s state leadership. Jaibhan Singh Pawaiya, an RSS veteran and bitter Scindia critic, has refused to campaign for Jyotiraditya loyalists, say sources.
The discontent within the BJP since the entry of Jyotiraditya has been evident over the past six months. The tug-of-war between the new entrants and the old warhorses had caused a long delay in cabinet formation. Ultimately, when Chouhan managed to form a full council of ministers after 100 days of assuming power, the scales were heavily tipped in Jyotiraditya’s favour with 14 of his men becoming ministers.
Though BJP state chief V.D. Sharma says that the “party is united and confident of winning all 27 seats”, a senior minister claims that “several rounds of discussions to finalise candidates had been inconclusive”. The minister said, “Jyotiraditya has made tickets for 14 ministers from his camp non-negotiable but he also wants the party to field 6 to 8 other former MLAs who had quit the Congress…this makes things difficult because we will have to refuse tickets to leaders who had defeated these new entrants in earlier polls”.
Sajjan Singh Verma, a former minister and close aide of Nath, says that the Congress is expected to declare its remaining 12 candidates within a week. Sources close to Nath claim that the former CM has also hired “three agencies to carry out regular block-level surveys in the bypoll constituencies and initial reports suggest favourable results for the Congress”. The party has also asked Karuna Shukla, niece of the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee and a former BJP leader, to help party workers mobilise voters. The party cadre has also been told to push the message of Jyotiraditya’s betrayal, poor handling of the Covid crisis by the Chouhan government and his ‘anti-farmer’ policies.
To offset any positive impact of a slew of recent announcements by Chouhan—reserving jobs in the state for people of MP domicile, infrastructure projects in the Gwalior-Chambal region, etc—the Congress plans to aggressively attack the BJP on the set of farm legislation passed by Parliament last week.
The Congress has also asked former Rajasthan deputy CM Sachin Pilot to campaign in the poll-bound seats. Pilot had, in July, brought the Congress-led Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan to the brink of collapse but, unlike Scindia, did not part ways with his party. The Congress hopes to cash in on Pilot’s popularity among the younger electorate while juxtaposing “his loyalty against Scindia betrayal”.
The BJP, for its part, hopes that the combined popularity of Chouhan and Scindia, coupled with its phenomenal stash of resources and strong election machinery will help the party sail through the bypolls comfortably. Failure to retain his government, however, may prove fatal for Chouhan’s political future, considering the constant speculation about his frosty ties with Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. For Scindia, the cost may be greater—his promising career in the BJP, which started with a Rajya Sabha nomination within hours of joining the party, may not go much further at least in the immediate future.
As for Nath, a self-projected clean sweep will naturally propel him back to the same league as a combative and wily Ashok Gehlot or Amarinder Singh but if his claims prove to be hollow, it just might be the end of a long and illustrious political innings.
The stakes for each side, indeed, are very high.
