Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath had been warned about a revolt by some MLAs of the Congress weeks ago, but chose not to act on it, sources stated here Friday. They said that the current situation the Congress government is facing in Madhya Pradesh could have been avoided had the chief minister and other party leaders acted on the information it had.
Twenty two Congress MLAs have resigned from the MP Assembly and four-time Lok Sabha MP Jyotiraditya Scindia quit the party earlier this week. Jyotiraditya has already joined the BJP while the Congress lawmakers who have put in their papers are staying put at a resort in Bangalore. The Congress government which is to face a floor test next week in the assembly next week, will certainly fall if these MLA switch allegiance to any other party.
Sources said that the MP chief minister was given specific examples of how some of the rebel MLAs were behaving. They told Nath that Congress workers, especially those in the Malwa-Nirmar and Gwalior-Chambal regions, had complained of their leaders’ behaviour. However, Nath did not seem to attach much importance to the information he got and that has landed the government in a soup in Madhya Pradesh.
Such a complaint had also been put forward by former minister and MLA Bisahu Lal, who has also joined the BJP along with Scindia. After joining the saffron party, Lal, speaking to reporters in the presence of former MP CM Shivraj Singh said that there were several other Congress leaders waiting to quit the party as they were dissatisfied at the behaviour meted out to them by Nath, Digvijaya Singh and their entourage.
The sources also stated that Nath had enough evidence that Scindia was disenchanted with the party and was planning something big. Yet he did not diffuse the situation, but continued to look the other way.
Scindia’s crossover to the BJP and the MLAs’ resignations has left the Kamal Nath government on the brink of collapse. The Congress and its allies now have 99 MLAs while the BJP has 107. Should the resignations be accepted, the Congress government will fall as the majority mark in the Assembly will be at 104.
Agencies
