Congress in MP is like a ‘dog’ hounded by its own

The ruling party members will then feel less inhibited in giving voice to the people’s grievances as was evidenced in the five-day winter session of the state Assembly. The BJP members caused quite an embarrassment for some ministers over matters of public interest. The Congress, which is the main opposition party, lacked cohesion and could at best be described as having had a token presence in the House. Incidentally, the Assembly sessions have been getting shorter and shorter during the Shivraj Singh Chouhan regime.
The Congress in Madhya Pradesh is rather like an abandoned child for whom no one cares. This became abundantly clear in the civic bodies elections held in November-December. There was no question of Congress leaders sitting together to chalk out an election strategy. PCC president Arun Yadav and Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Satyadev Katare are hardly even on talking terms. Ajay Singh, who was Leader of Opposition in the last Assembly, has aversion for both of them. Mahendra Singh Kalukheda, a Scindia loyalist who was an aspirant for the position of Leader of Opposition in the present Assembly, looks upon the three with utter distaste.
Senior party leaders like Digvijaya Singh, Kamal Nath, and Satyavrata Chaturvedi kept away from the State during the campaign. Jyotiraditya Scindia just made a guest appearance for a few hours in his Shivpuri constituency. AICC general secretary in charge of Madhya Pradesh Mohan Prakash also showed no interest in the civic elections.
On the other hand, BJP’s national president Amit Shah came to the state to launch the party’s campaign for the civic elections. The entire state party plus some Central ministers were constantly active in the campaign. Shivraj Singh Chouhan was, of course, the star campaigner as he had been in all the previous elections in the past decade. The result was as expected: once again the Congress fared miserably in all the nine Municipal Corporations for which elections were held and in most of the municipalities.
The history of factionalism in Madhya Pradesh Congress is pretty old. Digvijaya Singh, then chief minister, once described it with a fable about the ‘wandering dog’. It was at the party’s two-day political conference held in Indore in October 1997. The fable was that a dog, on journey, was hounded by its own community but taken good care of by others. Singh ended it with the plea, in the presence of then Congress president Sitaram Kesri (and all top state leaders who were present): “We can deal with our enemies; you only save us from our friends”. No need to say how the Congress chieftains of the time, Arjun Singh, Madhavrao Scindia, Shyama Charan Shukla and others, reacted.
The ‘fabled dogs’ stalked the Congress with greater ferocity after the party went out of power in 2003. Jamuna Devi, a veteran tribal leader, became the Leader of Opposition in the Assembly as the BJP government was headed by Uma Bharti. Jamuna Devi displayed a robust determination to take on the BJP, particularly after Shivraj Singh Chouhan became the chief minister, but she not only did not get cooperation of her party leaders in her endeavours but had to live with the ridicule, and occasional open hostility, from her own party men. Former Union Minister of State Suresh Pachauri, who had been appointed PCC chief, all but spearheaded the campaign against Jamuna Devi. He received at his Bhopal residence the memorandum from a group of dissident Congress men from Jamuna Devi’s Dhar district and promised them to convey their grievances against the Leader of Opposition to the party high command. All was done with a fanfare so that there was a big splash in the local media.
Then in the run up to the 2008 Assembly elections the party decided to bring out a charge-sheet against the BJP government. A committee, with Jamuna Devi as its chairperson, was constituted to prepare the charge-sheet. The charge-sheet was said to have contained explosive material about some ministers. When it was released to the press by PCC president Pachauri at the PCC office, Jamuna Devi refused to be present on the occasion. She was upset as entries regarding corruption charges against some senior ministers and bureaucrats were mysteriously deleted during the printing of the charge-sheet.
Jamuna Devi died after a prolonged illness in September 2010. The next pair at the top, PCC chief Kantilal Bhuria and Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh (Rahul Bhaiya) had their own distrust against each other. Bhuria was made to quit his cabinet post at the Centre after he was appointed PCC president. He was naturally harbouring the ambition of becoming the next chief minister after the ouster of the BJP government in 2013 which the Congress leaders had taken for granted. Bhuria had barely settled down in the PCC office when Ajay Singh threw water over his rising ambition. Talking to media persons, Ajay Singh remarked that history was going to repeat itself in Madhya Pradesh. In 1980, PCC chief was a tribal (Shivbhanu Singh Solanki) and a Thakur (Ajay Singh’s father Arjun Singh) was the Leader of Opposition. Following the Assembly elections, the latter became the chief minister. Even now a tribal was the PCC chief and a Thakur the Leader of Opposition and after the 2013 Assembly elections…. Thereafter the two could never get along with each other.
With an organisational setup virtually non-existent, the Congress leaders were busy throughout the 2013 Assembly election campaign about who would be the chief minister rather than how to win the elections. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Chouhan and the BJP were pitted against not one Congress but several Congresses (led by its chieftains) who were as interested in defeating the BJP as their rivals’ candidates in the party itself. They had collectively made a mockery of Rahul Gandhi’s “formula” for distribution of tickets.
Bhuria was replaced by Arun Yadav as PCC chief after the Assembly elections. Son of the late Subhash Yadav who was Deputy Chief Minister in the Digvijaya Singh government and later PCC chief, Arun was a light-weight without much organisational experience. The party was in utter deplorable state. Indiscipline was rampant, every one blaming everyone else for the defeat of the party in the elections. Arun Yadav started well with the intention of bringing some semblance of discipline in the organisation. And that turned out to be his undoing.
At the first meeting of PCC office-bearers, a party functionary, Jagdish Yadav, made some unsavoury remarks about Digvijaya Singh’s role. Arun Yadav promptly suspended Jagdish Yadav and asked for his explanation. It stunned everyone within the party and outside because such earnestness had not been seen in the state Congress for long. Before the day was out, Digvijaya Singh, then in Delhi, virtually snubbed Arun Yadav for suspending a “dedicated” Congress worker and publicly asked Arun Yadav to revoke the suspension. The fact is that Digvijaya Singh had never liked Jagdish Yadav who had come to the Congress from the Janata Dal. Arun Yadav was totally demoralised. Whatever plans he might have had to revamp the organisation went awry. He did not dare make any changes in the PCC, packed mostly with dead-wood.
Katare became Leader of Opposition by default. Digvijaya Singh acolyte Ajay Singh and Scindia loyalist Mahendra Singh Kalukheda were contenders for the post. As soon as the AICC observers left with one-line resolution authorising party president Sonia Gandhi to name the Leader of Opposition, the two started an ugly fight through the media, virtually forcing the party high command to ignore the two and name Bhind MLA Satyadev Katare as the Leader of Opposition. Katare never got through the formality of getting himself ‘elected’ by the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) and no one in the CLP really takes him seriously.