‘We don’t need any Scindia’: Kamal Nath confident of Congress winning MP polls
Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and state Congress chief Kamal Nath said on Friday that Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia has become ‘politically redundant’ even in his bastion Gwalior and that they don’t need him to return to power in the state.
Kamal Nath, who was addressing a gathering in Tikamgarh, around 270km from Bhopal, elucidated how the BJP lost the mayoral elections in Gwalior and adjoining city Morena despite Scindia’s switchover from the Congress to the saffron party.
Last July, the Congress won the mayoral elections in Gwalior, which once used to be the capital of the erstwhile Scindia kingdom, and its adjoining city Morena. Jyotiraditya Scindia is the grandson of Jivajirao Scindia, the last Maharaja of the princely state of Gwalior.
“When Scindia was there, why did they (BJP) lose the mayoral elections in Gwalior and its adjoining city Morena to the Congress last year? If he was such a big gun, why did they lose?…We don’t need any Scindia,” said Kamal Nath.
Kamal Nath and Scindia had together campaigned in the 2018 state election in which the Congress defeated the BJP by a slender margin. However, relations between Kamal Nath and Scindia soured after the latter defected to the BJP along with 22 Congress MLAs, bringing down the Congress government in the state.
When asked why he did not make attempts to save the Congress government, Kamal Nath said he did not want to run his government by “striking deals.”
However, the former Union minister expressed confidence that the Congress would make a comeback in this year’s assembly election and launch welfare schemes for farmers, young people and the poor in the state.
“Despite the BJP’s long rule in MP, unemployment, migration and drought-related problems still plague the Bundelkhand region, including Tikamgarh. If the Congress comes to power, it would pay special attention to the Bundelkhand region,” he added.
(With inputs from PTI)
