Senior lawyer and Congress Rajya Sabha member Vivek Tankha is emerging as the consensus candidate for the post of Chief Minister in the party’s faction-ridden Madhya Pradesh unit, where elections are due next year.
Tankha had unsuccessfully contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Jabalpur. Tankha is one of the few individuals within the party who shares long standing cordial relations with all the three regional Congress satraps—former CM and his Rajya Sabha colleague Digvijaya Singh, former Union minister Kamal Nath, who is an MP from Chhindwara, and former Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, whose supporters are also lobbying for him. Sources within the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) said that Tankha, who is handling the Vyapam related cases that were filed by Digvijaya Singh against the Shivraj Singh Chouhan headed state government, could be the ideal candidate to lead the party as he was “apolitical”, carried no baggage, had become close to party vice-president Rahul Gandhi in recent times and more importantly was on the good side of all the three regional stalwarts.
“During his RS election, the Congress was one MLA short of ensuring his victory and it was Kamal Nath who called up BSP’s Mayawati, who had four MLAs in Madhya Pradesh, seeking her support for Tankha. Tankha was one of the few names which was not objected to by any of the senior party leaders during the 2014 elections and he also got support from all three warring sides during last year’s Rajya Sabha polls. He may not be a mass leader right now, but he can end the factionalism, which is the biggest problem that we have been facing for long,” a Bhopal-based party functionary said.
Tankha was appointed as the MP advocate general in 1999 by Digvijaya Singh and was later made the additional solicitor general, the third ranking lawyer of Government of India, by the UPA government in 2009.
However, the news of the likely “elevation” of Tankha, whose father-in-law Ajay Mushran was the finance minster in the Digvijaya Singh Cabinet in the late 1990s and early 2000 and had made the record of presenting the state budget 10 times, was criticised by certain party leaders who stated that he did not have a mass base.
“His base, if any, is limited to the Mahakoshal region of MP and he does not know how the cadre functions or who are the people in the cadre. How can he be promoted as the CM face? The best person according to us is Scindia as he is young and has a mass base,” a Bhopal-based party spokesperson said.
Commenting on the development, MP Congress spokesperson Pankaj Chaturvedi said that it was upon the party high command to decide who would be the CM face in the state.
“We are diligent party workers and follow the directions of the party high command. Who the CM face will be is not important to us. Right now our focus is to prepare ourselves for the Assembly elections which we will be winning after so many years”.