Turmoil over candidate selection puts Congress in a spot in MP

For many who saw the video on social media, it may have appeared like a friendly banter between old contemporaries; a contest in witty repartee that’s become a rarity among today’s politicians. Yet, in Madhya Pradesh’s political circles, the goofy exchange between former chief ministers Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh at the launch of the Congress party’s manifesto for the November 17 assembly polls has only added to the spiralling discontent within the party – and the rumours of a rift between Nath and Digvijaya – over candidate selection for the impending election.

At the event in Bhopal on Tuesday (October 17), attended by several senior state Congress leaders and a posse of journalists, Nath claimed: “My relations with Digvijaya Singh go back many years... many years ago, I had given Digvijaya Singh a power of attorney which said that for Kamal Nath you will hear all the abuses; that power of attorney is valid even today.” Singh, who was seated on the dais, interjected Nath and said: “But who is really at fault must be clear.” He added that like Lord Shiv he was “willing to drink poison” (for Kamal Nath).

As the people gathered burst out laughing, Nath, the state Congress chief and the Congress’ obvious chief ministerial face, said: “He (Digvijaya) has swallowed many a bitter pill for me and will continue to do so in future.”

The trading of quips between the two leaders was in the context of rising unrest within a section of the Congress over the first list of 144 candidates for the upcoming assembly polls that was declared on October 15. The party’s choice of candidates on several seats has triggered a rebellion by Congress leaders who lost out in the race for a party ticket. Some of them have also resigned from the Congress in protest and either joined other parties, such as the BJP and the BSP or have declared their intent to contest as independents.

Congress unrest

In popular political discourse and per multiple pre-election opinion polls, the Congress party may be poised for a win against the ruling BJP in Madhya Pradesh. However, by favouring relative greenhorns and recent imports from other parties, particularly the BJP, over party loyalists and its past electoral warhorses in the candidate selection process, the Congress appears to be chipping away at its own victory prospects in the state.

The announcement of its first list of candidates for 144 of the state’s 230 assembly constituencies has not just set off a flurry of angry protests by those who were denied ticket but has also added heft to the steadily gaining perception of Digvijaya, still the tallest Congress leader in the state with loyalists practically spread across every town of MP, being marginalised within the party by his “old friend”. Congress insiders claim that in several constituencies where Digvijaya had suggested names of potentially winning candidates, Nath overruled the suggestion and got the party’s central election committee to endorse others.

Interestingly, shortly after the party declared its first list, a letter purported to be Digvijaya’s resignation from the Congress – seemingly printed on his official letterhead and carrying his signature – had begun doing the rounds in the Madhya Pradesh media and political circles. Digvijaya and his aides then claimed that the letter “is fake and has been forged by a desperate BJP that is staring at imminent defeat” while the former chief minister gave multiple sound bytes to journalists, asserting that “Digvijaya Singh had joined the Congress in 1971 and he will remain with the Congress until his last breath”.

However, despite Digvijaya’s vociferous rejection of reports of his unhappiness over the candidates fielded by the party, the rumours have only grown louder. On Tuesday, hours after his “light-hearted exchange with Kamal Nath”, the video of which he also posted on X, Digvijaya made a thread of posts on the micro-blogging site acknowledging the resentment within the party over candidate selection. “We had 5,000 aspirants for 230 seats... resentment among aspiring candidates is expected because every aspirant thinks that only she/he can win the election... those who missed out must be given a place in the organisation,” Digvijaya said, while also appealing to those who missed out to “be patient”.

Digvijaya issue

Curiously, Digvijaya has also asked those who lost out in the race for candidature to make a representation “based on facts” to the party’s general secretary and secretaries in-charge of Madhya Pradesh as well as to the observers that the party high command had appointed for short-listing candidates across the state’s 230 constituencies so that they can “get justice”.

On his part, Nath too has conceded that the first list has caused “some unhappiness” but he has continued to assert that the disaffection – and even resignation by leaders like former MP Gajendra Singh Rajukhedi, who has now joined the BJP, and former MLA Yadvendra Singh, who is now contesting the election from the Nagod seat on a Bahujan Samaj Party ticket – will not hamper the party’s victory prospects.

“No one is denying that there is some unhappiness but as Digvijaya Singh has also said, we had thousands of aspirants but we can only pick 230... on many seats, we had two or three candidates who have an equally strong chance of winning the seat but obviously I can’t field all of them... I have met many of those who lost out and am in touch with others too and my message to all of them is the same – this is a watershed election, it is not an election for a candidate or a party but for the people of the state; the people of MP are looking at the Congress to give them a good government after their bitter experience of 18 years with the BJP and we should not do anything that undermines what the people want,” Nath told The Federal.

Resentment in the Congress – or any other party, for that matter – over ticket distribution is not new. Yet, the upheaval that the first list of candidates has caused in the Congress couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time. The party’s top leadership, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi included, has been atypically aggressive in prophesising the party’s “150+ seats” victory in the ensuing polls; eager to avenge the humiliation that the Congress faced in March 2020 when Nath’s government was toppled due to mass defections within 15 months of winning a mandate that took 15 years in the making.

Cracks in Congress

Nath and other Congress leaders have been expressing confidence over a resounding victory given the palpable anti-incumbency against the BJP’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan led government and the crippling factional feuds that the saffron party has been besieged with in the state over the past year.

“Ever since we lost the state back in 2003, this is the first election in which everything is in our favour. The Chouhan government has become unpopular, the internal turmoil that we were infamous for has gripped the BJP in a much more devastating manner and because of issues like price rise, farmer distress and unemployment, even the magic of Narendra Modi is on the wane,” a senior MP Congress leader, who is part of the party’s election campaign committee, told The Federal.

The leader added: “This is why it was all the more important for us to ensure that our candidate selection process was unimpeachable because that is what really sets off the campaign. But unfortunately, we have started on the wrong foot. Though the list is largely a good one, some terrible choices stand out and because these are in constituencies where some senior and credible leaders have been overlooked or where we are banking on BJP imports, we have to now deal with a totally avoidable controversy.”

When the party’s candidate selection process began, the Congress leadership had made tall claims about ensuring transparency in ticket distribution and of following a set of criteria to accept or reject an aspirant’s claim for a ticket. The criteria included winnability, past electoral record (those who had lost the 2018 poll by over 20,000 votes or had lost more than two elections in a row were said to be out of contention) and grassroots activity, among others. The party also claimed that only those names which had figured in the multiple surveys conducted by the party and agencies hired by it for prospecting candidates in each constituency would make it to the final shortlist or probables.

However, leaders who were denied a ticket claimed that the Congress leadership did not stick to any of these claims when choosing several of the 114 candidates declared so far. Many believe that Digvijaya’s unease stems from the perception that candidates’ loyalty to Nath was the one criterion that trumped all others in the final lap of the candidate selection process. This, sources close to Digvijaya said, led to several leaders suggested by him, including NP Prajapati, former Assembly Speaker and sitting MLA from Gotegaon, former MP Gajendra Singh Rajukhedi and former MLA Yadvendra Singh, being denied ticket despite internal surveys identifying them as winning candidates.

Yadvendra Singh, who had won the Nagod constituency in 2013 but lost the seat to BJP stalwart Nagendra Singh, a member of the erstwhile Nagod principality, by a margin of just 1,234 votes told The Federal: “I was told by senior party leaders, including Randeep Surjewala and Jitendra Singh, that the only name that was submitted to the screening committee from the Nagod seat was mine because all surveys showed I will win. Digvijaya Singh had told me to start campaigning even before the list was declared but then when the official list came, I saw that the party had given the ticket to Rashmi Patel, who has no base in the constituency.” Yadvendra Singh is now contesting the election from Nagod on BSP ticket and has “vowed to ensure the Congress’ defeat”.

A ticket aspirant from the Suwasra constituency in Mandsaur district had a similar grievance. “I was assured by multiple state and national leaders of the ticket from Suwasra. Surjewala (the party’s MP in-charge) told me that the survey report was also in my favour but the party gave the ticket to Rakesh Patidar who had lost the by-election from here in 2020 by nearly 30,000 votes. Patidar had even failed to win the Mandi Board election before that but even then the party chose to give him a ticket because he is close to Sajjan Singh Verma (former minister and Kamal Nath loyalist). I will not leave the Congress but I will also not work for the party in this election,” the aspirant said, requesting anonymity.

Several state Congress leaders The Federal spoke to said it was “absolutely clear” that the party in Madhya Pradesh had become “Nath’s hostage” and stalwarts like Digvijaya had “valid reasons to be unhappy” because loyal party workers were being ignored while those being given tickets were recent entrants to the party from the BJP or “people who had spent the last three years trying to get close to Nath and his coterie of leaders like Sajjan Verma”.

The Congress is yet to declare candidates on 86 other seats. Though the first list of 144 candidates featured 69 of its sitting MLAs (with only two legislators being benched), there is unease among those incumbent MLAs whose candidature is yet to be declared. “There is a lot of buzz that MLAs or aspirants close to leaders like Digvijaya Singh, Arun Yadav and Ajay Singh are being targeted by Kamal Nath, who wants to ensure that maximum candidates owe their allegiance only to him. If this is true, the party will fare very poorly. Nath has to decide whether he only wants tickets for his loyalists or if he wants to return as chief minister,” a senior MLA whose candidature hasn’t been announced yet told The Federal.

The MLA added: “By denying tickets to people only because they are close to some other leader is a recipe for disaster. A month ago, we were confident of winning 150 plus seats but since the first list came out, people are now saying we may win only around 120 or 130. If the second list follows the same formula as the first one, even this figure will go down and we may ultimately have a result that is similar to 2018 (when Congress had won 114 seats against the BJP’s 109), which would mean that even if we form a government, it will meet the same fate as Nath’s first government. Is that what Nath wants?”