Till a month ago, Congress insiders had given up the battle of ballots for the Madhya Pradesh assembly. The leading lights from the state like general secretary Digvijay Singh, parliamentary affairs minister Kamal Nath and minister of state for power Jyotiraditya Scindia were at loggerheads. Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s popularity seemed unassailable. A month is indeed a long time in politics.
Speaking on conditon of anonymity, a senior Congress leader from Madhya Pradesh explained that things have changed in the last few weeks, and that now Congress has a fighting chance though Chauhan and the BJP still have an edge. There is now unity among the top leaders of the Congress in the state. Party vice-president Rahul Gandhi had bluntly told the senior leaders — the party bigwigs in the state including Digivijay Singh, Kamal Nath, Scindia, state Congress president Kantilal Bhuria, leader of opposition in the state assembly Ajay Singh, Rajya Sabha member Satyavrat Chaturvedi and former union minister Suresh Pachauri — that they have no option but to work together and hold rallies across the state. They have fallen in line.
There is now consensus that Jyotiraditya Scindia is the chief minister candidate for Congress, and the party cadre is enthused that there is a young leader to lead them. The Congress in the state while happy with the new-found unity is also detecting signs of discontent and division in the BJP, and they feel satisfied that the rival party is riven with dissension.
What gladdens the heart of Congress is the mega rally on September 25 that the BJP held at Bhopal where all the top leaders of the party assembled on the dais for the first time after Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi was declared the party’s prime minister candidate did not turn out to be the big success that it was expected to be.
The BJP claimed that it was the biggest rally and that more than five lakh people attended it and the Guinness Book of World Records representatives ratified the number. But the Congress has its account of the September 25 rally. Said the Congress leader: “The BJP claimed that there will be seven lakh people. But the people who turned up were less than two lakh. The organisers of the rally prepared food for four lakh people. The food that could not be consumed was dumped into the canals in the city and these canals were choked. People were disgusted with the wastage of food.”
Two other developments at the meeting gave cheer to the Congress. When Modi touched the feet of LK Advani, he (Advani) turned away from him and this was captured on the TV channels and in pictures in the newspapers the next day. The Congress leader said that the BJP wanted to showcase the unity of the party by gathering all the top leaders of the party on the same platform.
But Advani turning away his face from a genuflecting Modi showed that the differences between the two have not yet been papered over. And the rift was captured clearly in the news picture.
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