Bhopal, March 9
Rumour mills worked overtime on Holi eve throughout Monday with some reports from Delhi suggesting a sulking Jyotiraditya Scindia along with 10 Madhya Pradesh Congress MLAs had moved to Bengaluru triggering speculation over his next move.
Other reports had said the Congress had already chosen Scindia as the state PCC chief.
Soon after returning from New Delhi on Monday evening, Chief Minister Kamal Nath was huddled in a meeting with veteran Congress leader Digvijaya Singh and senior Cabinet colleagues at his residence. Political uncertainty gripped the state with two disgruntled Congress MLAs staying off the radar and all lawmakers including ministers of Scindia's camp switching off their mobile phones. Everything points to a suspense thriller ahead of the March 26 Rajya Sabha polls.
Chief minister had Nath met party interim chief Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi and returned to the state capital Monday evening.
Nath called on Sonia after eight MLAs of his party, BSP, SP and independents supporting his wafer-thin majority government returned from Haryana and Bengaluru.
Nath's meeting with Sonia comes at a time when Scindia is fighting a battle for political survival after losing the Lok Sabha elections from Guna last year.
He also discussed two candidates to be fielded for the Rajya Sabha elections, sources said. Nath had twice offered to resign from the party state president's post but was told to continue due to the infighting.
Two Congress MLAs Hardeep Singh Dang and Raghuraj Kansana who are believed to be camping in Bengaluru have not returned yet, a Congress leader said.
Dang does not belong to any Congress faction but he wants a Cabinet berth and has already forwarded his conditional resignation to the Assembly Speaker.
The state BJP has also called a meeting of its 107 MLAs on Holi (Tuesday), hours after sending the list of names to the central leadership to pick two candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections.
The development has come at a time when one of its MLAs Narayan Tripathi had frequented Nath's residence last week and dissent in Congress lawmakers and its allies ahead of the RS polls.
Tripathi and another Congress turncoat Sharad Kol had not turned up at a meeting called by the state BJP on March 3. BJP has sent a list of 20 to 22 names, including national general secretaries Ram Madhav and Kailash Vijayvargiya, to the party's central poll panel to pick two candidates for the RS polls, a senior leader said.
The names of Satyanarayan Jatiya and Prabhat Jha, both sitting Rajya Sabha members from the state, also figure in the list.
If 10 MLAs were to quit, the strength of the House would come down to 218 and the majority mark would be 109. The Congress strength would come down to 102 and the BJP would need just three more to win the majority. The suspended BSP MLA Rambai had already hinted at a surprise and two independents are not bound by any whip. That could see the fall of the government even before the Rajya Sabha polls. A Constitutional crisis can be precipitated.
In the 230-member state Assembly, the Congress has 114 MLAs while the BJP has 107. Four independent MLAs, two lawmakers of the Bahujan Samaj Party and one legislator of the Samajwadi Party are supporting the Congress-led state government. Two seats are vacant following the demise of a Congress and a BJP legislator.
Amid drama in MP, BJP calls legislature party meeting
BY NAVNEET MISHRA
Amid political drama in Madhya Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has called a legislature party meeting in Bhopal on Tuesday to discuss the current political situation and to work out a strategy to bring a no confidence motion against the Kamal Nath government.
Former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who is in Delhi for the last five days, will reach Bhopal on Tuesday morning to attend this meeting.
Sources in the BJP said the party is planning to bring a no confidence motion against the Kamal Nath government in this budget session which is scheduled to begin on March 16.
This is the second time in the month that the Kamal Nath government has got the jitters. Earlier in the month, some of the MLAs supporting former Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh reached Gurugram, however, Chief Minister Kamal Nath somehow managed to appease them. Now, MLAs and ministers from Jyotiraditya Scindia's camp have reached Bengaluru and their mobile phones are switched off.
Earlier, the number of MLAs who reached Bengaluru was 10 but now as per the latest information the number has gone up to 17.
Sources in the Congress said the Scindia camp MLAs are angry with the government because they felt that they have been ignored.
Former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has been working out the permutations and combinations of forming the government in Madhya Pradesh and has shared his plan with the top BJP leaders.
Chouhan has been so busy in all this that he didn't even reach Bhopal on March 5 to celebrate his birthday.
Currently, there are 228 MLAs in Madhya Pradesh of which the Congress has 114 while the BJP has 107. Four are Independents while two are from the Bahujan Samaj Party and one from the Samajwadi Party who are supporting the Kamal Nath government.
In such a situation, if the BJP brings in a no confidence motion and the Congress can't do damage control in time then the rebel MLAs can destabilise the Kamal Nath government.
(Navneet Mishra can be contacted at navneet.m@ians.in)
