CONGRESS ALLEGES BJP BID TO PULL DOWN MP GOVT.
New Delhi. March 4: Nine MLAs of the Madhya Pradesh Congress did a disappearing act out of which four were “rescued” by party leaders in a midnight fracas on Wednesday putting the state government on the edge.
Nine MLAs of the Madhya Pradesh Congress did a disappearing act out of which four were “rescued” by party leaders in a midnight fracas on Wednesday putting the state government on the edge.
Congress leaders in the state, however, appeared confident about the stability of the government with a section even indicating that the clamor for seats in the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections was the reason for the ongoing political fracas.
The Congress has a tenuous majority in the 230-member state Assembly with only 114 seats and relies on the support of Independents and BSP and SP MLAs to pull it through.
Congress is supposed to get two seats out of three in the upcoming
RS polls on March 26 and a feud is on within the party on the likely claimants.
Senior Congress leaders Jyotiraditya Scindia and Digvijay Singh are the two main contenders. The state leadership read Chief Minister Kamal Nath is keen on inducting a local leader for one of the seats leaving the fight open between Digvijay and Scindia for the one seat left.
Both these leaders lost last year’s Lok Sabha polls. Digvijay Singh is a sitting RS member and is retiring later this month.
Though many Congress leaders who did not wish to come on record claimed that this was part of the jostle for Rajya Sabha seats, a telling giveaway about sentiments in the state unit was a tweet by Umang Shinghar who is a minister in the state cabinet.
“All is well in the Kamal Nath government, this is just a drama for going to the Rajya Sabha,” he tweeted in Hindi.
When the MLAs were brought to Delhi apparently on a chartered flight, it was Digvijay Singh who made the first allegations of poaching against the BJP and it was his son MP state Minister Jaivardhan Singh and Pradesh Congress chief Jitu Patwari who rescued four MLAs from a hotel in Manesar, Gurugram in a midnight operation.
These MLAs were later flown to Bhopal where they met Chief Minister Kamal Nath.
The fate of the other five MLAs was still not clear with some Congress leaders saying they have been flown to Karnataka by the BJP and others claiming that they are back in MP.
Scindia also accused the BJP of poaching on its legislators, but asserted that the Congress government in the state was completely secure and stable.
Patwari said: “This is 100 per cent an attempt to poach (MLAs). We are united and our government is stable. We have counted the numbers and there is no threat to the government (in Madhya Pradesh)”.
The incidents that took place late on Tuesday night in Gurgaon near the national capital, were “obviously orchestrated by the BJP”, he said.
Kamal Nath on Wednesday accused Opposition BJP of trying to topple his government with the help of land mafias and crime syndicates in the state.
In a statement issued in Bhopal, Nath alleged that BJP was trying to purchase Congress MLAs and other legislators who supported his government to dislodge the state Congress government.
“Land mafias, crime syndicate and spurious drug dealers have become powerful in the state owing to patronage given to them by BJP during its 15-yeartenure in MP that ended in December 2018,” he said.
MADHYA PRADESH Assembly has 230 seats out of which Congress has 114 and BJP 107. The halfway mark is 116.