Opinion: Exit rumours may have died down, but Kamal Nath faces uncertain future

Opinion: Exit rumours may have died down, but Kamal Nath faces uncertain future

Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath’s decision to join Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Gwalior on March 2 may have put an end to the speculation surrounding him joining the BJP. The veteran leader, however, continues to face an uncertain future.  Â

Nath, who is currently an MLA from Chhindwara, has little or no role in the Madhya Pradesh party unit where younger leaders like Jitu Patwari and Umang Singhar are calling the shots. The All India Congress Committee (AICC) secretariat and the Congress Working Committee (CWC), having been reconstituted recently, have no vacancies. Nath would have been an asset in the INDIA alliance seat talks and negotiations. But, in most states, negotiations have already taken place or have reached a point of no return. In short, there is no role for Nath.

Nath’s only option is to contest from Chhindwara, where his son Nakul is currently a Lok Sabha MP, or look for the neighbouring seats of Betul, Seoni, Balaghat or Jabalpur. If Nath manages to win the Lok Sabha seat, he would become a strong contender to be leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha provided his party crosses the 55-seat mark. Â

Congress insiders feel Nath’s task of salvaging his image within the Congress Parivar may not be easy. After all, he was one of the most influential leaders in the present day Congress, whose experience and proximity to Indira, Sanjay and Rajiv Gandhi came second to none.

In the last ten years, the grand old party has seen an exit of 15 former chief ministers – SM Krishna, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Captain Amarinder Singh, Narayan Datt Tiwari (now dead), Ashok Chavan, Pema Khandu, Kiran Reddy, Vijay Bahugana, Digambar Kamat, Syeda Anwara Taimur (now dead), Luizinho Faleiro, Ravi Naik, Pratap Singh Rane, Mukul Sanghma and Narayan Rane.

Nath has been a nine-time winner of Lok Sabha from Chhindwara. He is a leader who has been part of the Congress since the Sanjay Gandhi era without quitting the party even once. Son of a businessman from Meerut, Nath was a contemporary of Sanjay and Rajiv Gandhi at Doon School, where he was affectionately called ‘Roly’. He later earned a BCom degree from St Xavier’s, Calcutta. At the height of Sanjay’s clout during 1975-76, there used to be a slogan, “Indira Gandhi ke do haath, Sanjay Gandhi aur Kamal Nath.”

In December 2018, Rahul Gandhi defied his political instincts to crown Nath as Madhya Pradesh chief minister. The move boomeranged when Jyotiraditya Scindia, a childhood friend of Rahul, defected to the BJP, bringing an abrupt end to the Nath regime within 15 months of assuming office.

Rahul, Sonia and Priyanka Gandhi, however, continued to rate Nath as the best and the brightest. In 2023, Nath was made chief ministerial candidate and given a free run to select party nominees for the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls.

The enormity of Congress’s defeat in the Madhya Pradesh polls had prompted AICC spokesman Alok Sharma to accuse Nath of being hand in glove with the BJP during the elections. Sharma had said that there should have been introspection by the Congress leadership into Nath’s actions during the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections. But Gandhis and Mallikarjun Kharge chose to slap a show cause notice on Sharma, suspending him from the party.

However, the loyalist in Nath dithered and wavered a bit in February 2024 when he was denied a Rajya Sabha berth. Team Rahul Gandhi wanted former MP Meenakshi Natarajan to get into the upper house, but her candidature was blocked by party MLAs considered close to Nath.

When Nath reportedly called on Sonia Gandhi, she asked him to speak to Rahul who, in turn, advised Nath to meet K C Venugopal and Bhunwar Jitendra Singh, considered far too junior to him. In the meantime, state BJP president VD Sharma and former Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan went public, asking Nath to join the BJP.

A bigger drama unfolded when a powerful lobby within the BJP reportedly blocked his entry. Nath beat a hasty retreat, professing loyalty to his parent organisation. In an unprecedented move, Rahul had reportedly called up Nath, requesting him to stay on. It was unprecedented because in the earlier cases of Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasada, Milind Deora and RPN Singh, Rahul made no effort to request them to stay on. He used to say “jisko jaana hai, jaaye (Whoever wishes to leave, leave)”. Clearly, he made an exception in the case of Nath.

Perhaps Rahul had some hazy memory of dramatic events in June 1979 when he was all of nine. Nath had supposedly lured a maverick Raj Narain, then a close confidant of Charan Singh, at Brigadier Kapil Mohan’s Pusa Road, New Delhi residence. The discussion over lehsun ke pakore, mushroom ke pakore and tea resulted in a plot that saw the then deputy prime minister Charan Singh, Raj Narain and others toppling Morarji Desai as prime minister.

Charan Singh had raised the bogey of dual membership, asking for the removal of Jan Sangh-RSS members from the Desai government. The farmer leader was subsequently sworn in as prime minister with the outside support of the Congress. The bonhomie between the Bharatiya Lok Dal and the Congress that saw their workers raising the slogan “Charan Singh laaya aisi aandhi, desh ki neta Indira Gandhi (Charan Singh heralds a new wave with national leader Indira Gandhi)” was short-lived.

Sanjay and Indira, hot on heels, withdrew their support for Charan Singh’s regime – giving him the dubious record of being the first prime minister to leave office without ever facing Parliament. Nath could not help gloating whenever a slogan was raised: “Indira Gandhi ke do haath; Sanjay aur Kamal Nath”.

I have often mentioned tales of Nath’s political acumen, which actually requires a volume. During the 2004 Lok Sabha, when Nath was pitted against a belligerent Prahlad Patel at Chhindwara, Nath had advised his BJP rival not to “waste” money on taking out a jeep rally in Chhindwara (as a show of strength). He had boasted that anyone owning a four-wheeler in his parliamentary constituency was personally known to him. The poll outcome on May 13, 2004 saw Nath beating Patel by over 63,000 votes.

During the UPA years 2004-14, Nath maintained a track record of being a “go-getter” and a “doer”. When the UPA was struggling to push through a bill on FDI in retail, Nath performed a near miracle, bringing Mayawati to vote for the bill in the Rajya Sabha in the latter half of 2008. Just as confident opposition leaders were retiring to bed, Nath was with Mayawati in the company of Satish Mishra, promising the BSP supremo to bring in the SC/ST job reservation bill in Parliament in exchange for her support to FDI.

Nath is known for his ready wit. He had narrated how he had explained his stand against agricultural protectionism by the developed countries to European Union trade commissioner Peter Mandelson while travelling with him from Paris to Brussels by train.

“Here are the fat cows living on subsidised food, and they can’t stand on their legs. That is my story and that is my argument,” he had told Mandelson. On another occasion, he was asked what time he woke up every morning. Nath quickly said, “First ask me what time I sleep!”

In February 2007, he got industry chamber CII to hold a conclave in Chhindwara. Two private jets carrying leading Indian industrialists had landed on the Nath family’s airstrip.

In December 2020, Nath tried to broker peace between the Gandhis and G-23. Informed sources had said that it was Priyanka’s idea to draft Kamal Nath as an intermediary. Nath had shuttled between dissenters and Sonia before setting up a meeting at 10, Janpath on December 19, 2020. He had met Ghulam Nabi Azad, a leader of sorts of G-23, expressing Sonia’s desire for rapprochement.

On the political, economic and social turf, Kamal Nath is known to have friends cutting across party lines and ideological divides. His proximity to a business baron is said to have played a role in his near induction in the BJP, but family ties with the Gandhis and a sense of loyalty prevented Nath from crossing a ‘Laxman Rekha’ of party discipline, probity and decency in public life.