The chief minister’s
dilemma
N D Sharma
Congress government of Madhya Pradesh
celebrated six months of its existence in
mid-June. Its survival for six months can
certainly be considered a major
achievement in as much as it has been going
through one crisis after another since its
formation.
Kamal Nath
At the cabinet meeting a day after the celebrations, a
minister owing allegiance to Jyotiraditya Scindia was said
to have told Chief Minister Kamal Nath that they were not
happy with his working. Kamal Nath stopped one of his
followers from retaliating and avoided the situation
getting ugly. He, however, could not restrain himself from
telling the Scindia followers that he knew on whose
behalf they were speaking. Later on, a couple of Scindia
camp ministers claimed before a section of media that
the Chief Minister was not listening to them but he would
have to. The Kamal Nath supporters demanded removal
of the two ministers from the cabinet.
Jyotiraditya Scindia
Squabbling among ministers is not a sudden
development. The government had started working
under not so healthy circumstances. After a
procrastinated tussle with then Guna MP Jyotiraditya Scindia (who was
chairman of Campaign
Committee during the
Assembly poll campaign),
PCC chief Kamal Nath
was selected to be the
leader of the Congress
Legislature Party (CLP).
He took oath as Chief Minister on December 17. Selection of ministers turned
out to be more difficult.
Scindia and former Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh
ardently pressed the claims for their supporters. Several
meetings were held in Bhopal and Delhi. At one stage
even party president Rahul Gandhi intervened. The only
point of agreement was that the first time MLAs should
not be included in the Council of Ministers.
Digvijaya Singh
Haggling continued for over a week. In sheer
exasperation, Kamal Nath accepted the names and
appointed 28 ministers. As Scindia and Singh were said to
be insisting on cabinet rank for some of their supporters
who had never been ministers in the past, Kamal Nath
gave cabinet rank to all of them. Only six of them were
with previous experience as ministers, while 22 had been
made ministers for the first time. He distributed the
departments as demanded.
Some of the MLAs who had
been ministers in the past
and were expecting to be
included in the cabinet were
left out, reportedly because
of the objections either
from Digvijaya Singh or
from Scindia.
Kamal Nath, 72, started
his innings as Chief Minister
of Madhya Pradesh with
these handicaps. He had
little choice either in picking
up his ministers or allotting them portfolios. Moreover,
he had no experience of running a State government. He
has been active in Parliament since 1980 when he was
elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time. He has
handled several
ministries at the
Centre admirably.
Rahul Gandhi
But as Chief
Minister, neither he
has control over his
ministers nor has he
been able to control
the wayward
bureaucracy or the
‘criminals in uniform’
as MP’s police force
was once described by the State High Court. His task has not been made any
easy by Digvijaya Singh who is guiding the bureaucracy
and the police according to his own political expediency.
That is a major cause of resentment in the Scindia camp
as the bureaucrats working in the departments with the
Scindia camp ministers are also listening to Digvijaya
Singh more than their own ministers.
Frequent transfers and re-transfers of civil and police
officers (reportedly involving huge amounts of money)
have further paralysed the administration. There is a
government in the State but no governance. Madhya
Pradesh claims to be a power surplus State but there are
frequent power cuts
in the State, for long
periods in rural and
semi-urban areas.
The temperature this
summer has been
unusually high
across the State and
the supply of
drinking water all
over the State has
been as dismal as in
the past.
Shivraj Singh Chouhan
The BJP government of Shivraj Singh Chouhan paid
little attention to improving drinking water supply in the
State. All that the present Congress government did was
to promise that the people of the State would soon have
‘Right to Drinking Water’ and a bill for this purpose would
be introduced in the next session of the Assembly. Law
and order situation is getting worse day by day. The
Congress organisation in the State is as much in a
disarray as the government. As PCC chief, Kamal Nath has
done little to revamp the party.
It was under these circumstances that the Congress
went to the Lok Sabha polls in April-May and could win
only one seat (out of 29). Kamal Nath’s son Nakul Nath
won with a slender margin from Chhindwara which
Kamal Nath had vacated to contest from Chhindwara
Assembly constituency which the party MLA had vacated
for the Chief Minister. This turned out to be the beginning
of another excruciating period for Kamal Nath.
At the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting
held to review the miserable performance of the
Congress party in the Lok Sabha elections, party
president Rahul Gandhi was reported to have remarked
that Kamal Nath (along with Rajasthan Chief Minister
Ashok Gehlot and Tamil Nadu leader P Chidambaram)
had neglected the party interests for the sake of their
sons. Kamal Nath was not present at the meeting.
Narendra Modi
Later on, Kamal Nath sought appointment from Rahul
Gandhi but did not get it. He went to Delhi hoping that he
would be able see the party president but in vain. He
made a ‘courtesy call’ on Prime Minister Narendra Modi
along with his newly elected son Nakul Nath which created mirth in social
media. There was a
cartoon in which Kamal
Nath was shown
presenting his son to
PM Modi and saying: he
is all alone, please
adopt him also.
Amit Shah
To further add to
Kamal Nath’s woes,
Home Minister Amit Shah
constituted a three-member Special Investigation Team
(SIT) to re-investigate the anti-Sikh riots of 1984; Shah
was said to have specifically asked the SIT to probe why
Kamal Nath’s name was not
included in the FIR by Delhi
police at the time even
though Nath was said to be
present before Rakabganj
Gurdwara when two Sikhs
were killed. Income Tax and
Enforcement Directorate
investigations were already
going on against him. These
were started during the Lok
Sabha election campaign. Soon after the SIT was
constituted, Kamal Nath made a ‘courtesy call’ on Home
Minister Amit Shah.
Sonia Gandhi
Rahul Gandhi was unavailable and Kamal Nath failed
to meet Sonia Gandhi also. On return to Bhopal, it was
reported in a section of
Bhopal media that he had
written a letter to Sonia
Gandhi seeking direction to
three top Congress leaders
of Madhya Pradesh
(apparently Jyotiraditya
Scindia, Digvijaya Singh and
himself) to withdraw two
ministers each from the
cabinet so that he (Kamal
Nath) could reshuffle his
cabinet and accommodate some disgruntled MLAs from
Congress as well as outside. In the 230-member
Assembly, Congress has 114 members. His government is
supported by one SP, two BSP and 4 independent
members. BJP strength has come down from 109 to 108
as Jhabua MLA G S Damor was elected to Lok Sabha.
Kamal Nath is thus in a really unenviable position. His
own high command is not listening to him. His ministers
are not obeying him. His two party colleagues, Digvijaya
Singh and Jyotiraditya Scindia are not leaving him free to
run the government. The Centre is going relentlessly
against him in Income Tax, money laundering and antiSikh riot cases. What would be his next move is
anybody’s guess.