Party leaders say Kamal Nath took it for granted that he would uproot BJP.
NEW DELHI
After the BJP swept the Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, the Congress party is demotivated to the extent of some of its leaders contemplating to join the BJP. Party leaders blame the “sense of superiority” of Kamal Nath, who had taken it for granted that he would uproot the BJP from the state. It was apparently because of this that the Congress cadre was not functioning to its full potential.
A leader close to the leadership said, “All those ten people with whom Kamal Nath would discuss everything and strategize about the elections, have lost their own seats. This shows what kind of preparations they were doing for the whole Congress team. They couldn’t even save their own seats how could they have planned for other seats?”
Moreover, there are reports of Nath being asked to resign from the top position of the state organisation. This, however, has been refuted by Nath’s media advisor, Piyush Babele. A party insider said, “The way he convened the meeting last week and asked every MLA to assess the situation on the ground post the elections to see where they had lacked and how they lost a battle they had won. This signals that he is not planning to resign. Moreover, we were told by Babele that the high command had not asked Kamal Nath to resign.”
Congress spokesperson in Madhya Pradesh, Mithun Singh Ahirwar when asked about several leaders blaming Kamal Nath for the loss, said, “Nothing succeeds like success and nothing fails like failure. It happens. We are gathering information from our candidates how EVMs are responsible for this defeat.
Moreover, people who are making these allegations against Kamal Nath are the same people who praised Kamal Nath’s strategy in a way that they used to say that we were fighting these elections on people’s issues.” He further added, “This was the only election probably in the country where religion was not used, and caste was not the issue. We were talking about developmental schemes. Had we won the elections they would have praised Kamal Nath all the time. Based on feedback from our candidates, we think EVM is mainly responsible for the defeat. People who are questioning Kamal Nath-ji must look at his track record. He was the same person who got us victory in the 2018 Assembly elections.”