Kamal Nath in the cross-hairs as defeat lifts lid off discontent in MP Congress

The quintessential Delhi power mediator, the 77-year-old had proved his detractors wrong when dismissed as “a fish out of water”, he had adapted to Madhya Pradesh politics like duck to water. Even after the quick loss of power following the 2018 win, he had bounced back, leading the Congress fightback to the point that, briefly, another shot at government seemed within reach.

However, the scale of the defeat Sunday, reducing the Congress to its worst performance in 20 years at 66 seats, may mark the end of the MP stint for the veteran Congress leader.

His choice over Jyoritaditya Scindia as Chief Minister when the Congress won narrowly in the 2018 Assembly elections was one of those master strokes that Kamal Nath pulled off. The fact that this eventually brought down the Congress government, with Scindia walking out with 22 MLAs in March 2020, only strengthened his hold on the state unit.

Old comrade Digvijaya Singh was as happy at the field clearing out for the two of them, and as Kamal Nath emerged as the aggressive, Hindutva face of the Congress in MP – running a campaign centred around him – Digvijaya did the legwork.

Scindia now is having the last laugh as his stronghold of Gwalior-Chambal appears to have gone with its “Maharaja”, and largely deserted the Congress.

Few expect Kamal Nath to sit in a corner and nurse his wounds for long, though. The nine-time parliamentarian who only moved to Assembly polls in 2018 could fancy a return to the Centre. Right now, his turf Chhindwara is held by his son Nakul.

However, the Congress might find it harder to keep down the angry voices that are sure to follow Sunday’s defeat, till now kept hushed by the Kamal Nath brigade. Already, there is talk of Kamal Nath being “overconfident”, “centralising power”, and the campaign suffering from “poor candidate selection” and “infighting” to “sloppy election management”.

Such was Kamal Nath’s control that even Digvijaya Singh’s candidates had to take a back seat. “Most of Kamal Nath’s candidates were ahead in the surveys. He was taking no chances as he did not want any one group to hold power and bring his government down. But there were issues with the candidate lists in hindsight. Some of the tickets which were distributed in the Malwa region were literally like a walkover to the BJP candidates. In the end, Kamal Nath failed in this endeavour and did not heed advice,” a Congress leader said, adding that the party lost at least 20-25 seats due to “bad ticket selection”.

“Kamal Nath has won multiple elections and is a good manager, but that was not enough,” the leader added.

One video that leaked and was immediately seized upon by the BJP had Kamal Nath telling party workers disgruntled over candidate selection to “tear” Digvijaya and his son Jaivardhan’s clothes. The two leaders tried to immediately repair the rip by appearing together jointly at a press conference, with Kamal Nath also describing their partnership as that of ‘Jai’ and ‘Veeru’ from the 1975 classic Sholay.

Unlike Scindia and Digvijaya, Kamal Nath does not belong to MP. Born in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, he was parachuted into Chhindwara for his first Lok Sabha election in 1980. This was the post-Janata Party election that saw the Indira Gandhi-led Congress come back to power at the Centre, after the Emergency cloud. Kamal Nath had by then established himself in the coterie of Sanjay Gandhi, who ran the show during the Emergency years, and was even referred to as “Indira Gandhi’s third son”.

Kamal Nath would keep winning from Chhindwara, with the tribal district transforming over the years and getting all the trappings of modernity. Digvijaya’s hold on the ground eased Kamal Nath’s political career in the state.

Those close to Kamal Nath say that after the 2018 narrow win and the subsequent loss of power, the Congress leader realised he lacked a personal connect with party workers and tried to work on this. However, there are few signs that he bridged the gap.

A Congress leader from Ashok Nagar said: “Kamal Nath was always seen as an outsider… During an event in Bhopal, for example, where leaders from the BJP switched over to the Congress, some of them tried to present a Congress scarf to Kamal Nath, but he refused to wear the same. The leaders were left miffed. It’s small incidents like these that count.”

Given Kamal Nath’s dominance, apparently with the blessings of the high command, to whom he had a direct line, the Congress election in-charges for MP also kept in the sidelines.

The last party in-charge, Jai Prakash Agarwal, was removed when he dodged the question on whether Kamal Nath was the CM face at a press briefing. Kamal Nath anyway showed little inclination to work with him. The Congress then rushed in Randeep Surjewala, around two months before the polls. “Surjewala did not meddle with Kamal Nath that much and even proclaimed him to be the CM face. However, he still could not assert himself so late in the campaign and do what was necessary,” a Congress leader said.

“Most second-rung leaders were absent because the leadership was busy projecting Kamal Nath over everybody else. It was a Kamal Nath show from the start and, in the end, the lack of strong faces in different regions hurt us. In comparison, the BJP had Union ministers and MPs contesting,” another Congress leader said.

Kamal Nath also failed to enthuse people in his direct interactions with them, his speeches offering no alternative vision and sticking to a routine format where he began with talking about the “betrayal” by Scindia and “farmer distress” (which cut little ice given the strides made by MP under the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP regime), and ended with talk of youth unemployment.

The BJP was far ahead of the game, with its leaders typically reaching out personally to voters, addressing their local issues, talking about Chouhan’s many welfare schemes, conveying announcements from new districts to medical colleges to railway stations, and acknowledging the local culture of the people via their deities and food choices.

Now that INDIA partners have turned on the Congress, Kamal Nath will also bear the brunt of it in MP as, here, the Samajwadi Party directly blamed him for the scuttling of seat-sharing talks. Akhilesh Yadav talked more than once about party leaders being made to wait in vain for hours, and slamming Kamal Nath’s “arrogance”.

Even in personal comparison with Chouhan, Kamal Nath paled. The Congress leader used to his Delhi ways could at best muster two-three rallies per day, in contrast with the BJP leader, who was at work from 9 am till 3 in the night, addressing 10-12 rallies daily. Compared to Kamal Nath’s 100-odd rallies, Chouhan alone took part in 165, with the BJP top brass lending its weight with more.