End of Road for Cong’s Kamal Nath? At 77, This May Have Been his Last Shot at MP CM’s Chair

“Kya kasoor tha mera jo meri sarkar girayi? (What was my fault? Why did they bring down my government?)," Kamal Nath said at an election rally in Madhya Pradesh last month that News18 had attended.

At 77, Nath was appealing to the people to make him the Chief Minister again, evoking the sympathy card, saying his government of 15 months was brought down by undemocratic means by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The voters have, however, refused to give Nath his last hurrah in form of the Chief Minister’s chair, with the Congress crashing to a huge defeat in Madhya Pradesh. Till earlier this year, Nath was confident of a win, citing the guarantees he was offering to the people. He had taken a leaf out of the Congress win in Karnataka to offer Rs 1,500 per month to women and an LPG cylinder at Rs 500 if he came to power. In not the best of health, this was seen as Nath’s last shot at the CM’s chair. He had earlier dismissed all rumours about him being in the race for the Congress President last year, saying his mission was only to focus on Madhya Pradesh polls.

Nath was already nursing wounds from the “back-stabbing" by his former counterpart Jyotiraditya Scindia, who walked over to the BJP in 2020 and brought down the Kamal Nath government. This time, those close to Nath said people would take revenge on Scindia. However, this card also did not work as the BJP has performed impressively in the Gwalior-Chambal region, which is Scindia’s stronghold. Nath did try taking potshots at Shivraj Singh Chouhan, like telling News18 why Chouhan had woken up to ‘ladli behanas’ only after 18 years and a few months before elections. But women seemed to have trusted Chouhan more.

In the last week of the campaign, Nath had shifted to his stronghold of Chhindwara and undertook campaign from there across the state. But Nath at most did two-three rallies daily, compared to Chouhan who held 10-12 rallies daily, covering 165 constituencies in the last two weeks of the campaign. Nath brought in Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to campaign extensively in the state and Rahul Gandhi also made a late entry, however, all failed in face of the popular ‘Ladli Behana’ scheme of Chouhan. Kamal Nath had been the Chhindwara MP since 1980 and became an MLA in 2019 from the assembly seat of Chhindwara to become CM. But his dream to be a CM of Madhya Pradesh for a full term will in all probability remain a dream.