In what will be another setback to the Congress on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections, party veteran leader Kamal Nath and his son and Lok Sabha MP Nakul are likely to quit the party and join the BJP, sources said.
A former Chief Minister and nine-time MP, Kamal Nath, who has worked with three generations of the Gandhis, is set to end his over 50-year association with the Congress at a time when the party is bracing for one of its toughest electoral battles till date.
Nath, 77, will be the tenth former CM of the Congress to leave the party in the last 10 years, joining the ranks of Maharashtra’s Ashok Chavan – who switched to the BJP earlier this week – Mukul Sangma (Meghalaya), Amarinder Singh (Punjab), Ghulam Nabi Azad (Jammu and Kashmir), Vijay Bahuguna (Uttarakhand), late Ajit Jogi (Chhattisgarh), SM Krishna (Karnataka), Narayan Rane (Maharashtra) and Giridhar Gamang (Odisha) who returned to the party recently.
Amid speculation of his switch to the BJP, Nath reached Delhi from Chhindwara Saturday afternoon. Asked whether he was joining the BJP, he told reporters, “Why are you all getting excited. If there is something like that I will inform you first.”
On whether he was denying it, Nath said, “Inkaar ki baat nahin hai (this is not about denying it). This (that he was switching sides) you are saying. You are getting excited. I am not excited, iss taraf ya uss taraf (either way).”
His son Nakul's move to drop “Congress” from his social media accounts, however, fuelled the speculation.
Madhya Pradesh BJP spokesperson Narendra Saluja also tweeted a picture of the father-son duo with the caption ‘Jai Shri Ram’.
Four-time Chhindwara MLA and former state minister Deepak Saxena told The Indian Express that “talks were underway” on Kamal Nath joining the BJP and that this was because of lack of development in Chhindwara.
“All our MLAs are from Congress and yet the funds were not released to Chhindwara. For the sake of Chhindwara’s development, this move has happened. Kamal Nath was constantly attacked and blamed for the Assembly (election) loss. In two-three days, you will see the results of these talks,” Saxena, a long-time ally of Nath, said.
Nath recently hosted a closed-door meeting with senior Chhindwara leaders where he discussed future election strategies. Chhindwara Congress district president Vishwanath Okte told The Indian Express, “Kamal Nath discussed strategies for Lok Sabha. The positions that had to be handed out and event planning. He did not discuss anything about joining the BJP.”
The state BJP unit is meanwhile in a huddle. “Kamal Nath is going to join the BJP for sure. We have been in talks with him ever since he was snubbed over Jitu Patwari. He knew that Chhindwara was going to be a BJP seat in the upcoming election and took the smart step,” a senior BJP leader said.
Nath’s confidant Sajjan Singh Verma addressed a press conference in Indore where he spoke about removing the Congress symbol from his own social media account. “If the person with whom I did politics for 40 years – if from his profile it is removed, then even from my profile it should be removed. Kamal Nath has not taken any decision yet. Maan, samman aur swabhimaan. People do politics because of that. They take a different path. I am not saying Kamal Nath had experienced something similar. Wherever Kamal Nath goes, Sajjan Verma will follow.”
Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Jitu Patwari dismissed the “rumours”: “Can you imagine Indira’s third son leaving the Congress? Even in your dreams, can such a thought occur that Kamal Nath, under whose guidance we fought the Assembly elections just two months ago, would leave the party?”
Senior leaders in the state Congress, however, expressed some anxiety. Said one party leader, “Kamal Nath has not dismissed any of the rumours. He has not said even once that he would take strict action against those spreading rumours.”
Nath’s exit would be a huge blow for the Gandhi family given his close personal ties, going back to the days of Indira Gandhi. Nath, a Doon School mate of Sanjay Gandhi, joined the Youth Congress in the 1970s and soon became a key member of Sanjay’s inner circle with the likes of Jagmohan, V C Shukla, Bansi Lal, Om Mehta, Jagdish Tytler and later Akbar Dumpy Ahmad – a coterie that is often blamed for all that went wrong during and after the Emergency.
Nath, who hails from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, was rewarded for his friendship with Sanjay with the Chhindwara seat in Madhya Pradesh in the 1980 Lok Sabha polls. Chhindwara and Nagaur in Rajasthan were the only two seats the Congress had won in the 1977 elections post Emergency when the party was wiped out in the Hindi heartland. Since then, Nath won nine Lok Sabha elections from Chhindwara, losing only once.He was one of Sanjay’s pointsmen who used to drum up political support for the Emergency. It is said that it was he who met Shiv Sena’s Bal Thackeray on Sanjay’s behalf and enlisted his support for the Emergency.
“Sanjay Gandhi used Nath, then his ace lieutenant, to start ‘back channel’ talks with Bal Thackeray. Founder of the Shiv Sena and known as the strongman of Maharashtra, Thackeray had been a strong critic of the Congress. After the Emergency in 1975, Sanjay spoke to him on the phone and sent Nath to Mumbai to meet him… Thackeray agreed to support the Emergency. ‘It’s good for the country,’ he told Nath. Then he added, ‘Once the law and order situation improves, the Emergency can be lifted’,” Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has written in her book, ‘How Prime Ministers Decide’.
Nath had been a minister in the P V Narasimha Rao government and later in the UPA I and II governments led by Manmohan Singh. He was one of Rao’s interlocutors who held parleys with L K Advani in the months before the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
Despite being in the Congress for decades, Nath was never really active in Madhya Pradesh politics. He was always a Delhi leader, known for his links with the corporates. He became active in MP politics only in 2018 when he was appointed the state Congress chief. Later that year, Rahul Gandhi anointed him as the CM after the Congress won the Assembly elections, much to the displeasure of the younger party leader Jyotiraditya Scindiawho switched to the BJP in March 2020 after toppling the Nath government.
The exit of Nath, who was never a regional satrap with deep organisational support, is hence going to be more a psychological blow to the Congress, coming as it does right ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, rather than a massive organisational setback. The Congress is already battling a perception gaining ground that the Opposition INDIA bloc is adrift and the Congress is facing desertions.
