For Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath, this is the best moment in his political career. That he took such a long time reaching where he has is itself surprising. At 72, he is not exactly young. For a man as promising, ambitious and resourceful as he is, boxing himself into a corner in his Chhindwara parliamentary constituency would have been galling. But the wily Digvijaya Singh never let him grow, so Kamal Nath did the next best thing—devoting ample time for what he calls the Chhindwara model of development, which he now intends to replicate across the state.
A fierce loyalist of Indira Gandhi, his biggest mistake was his alleged role during the anti-Sikh riots chronicled in a couple of books and an inquiry commission, which faulted him for a mob that burnt two innocent Sikhs to death at the capital’s Gurdwara Rakab Ganj during the 1984 pogrom. But for that stain, he could have even been the Grand Old Party’s answer to the BJP’s Pramod Mahajan, whose organising and fundraising skills were legendary. Like Mahajan, he has friends across the aisle. Mahajan rose to the third position in the party hierarchy after Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani and could even have been the party’s PM candidate in 2014 had Grim Reaper not played hookey.
Fortunes changed in Kamal Nath’s favour after Congress President Rahul Gandhi made him the head of the state party unit. He seized the moment, used his networking skills to breathe life into the moribund party unit, weaponised the farm unrest and anti-incumbency, and emerged victorious in the chiffhanger elections. Chhindwara contributed handsomely, as the Congress swept all its seven Assembly segments with impressive margins. Destiny again rolled the dice, making him the head of the government with a razor-thin majority. But with a grumpy Jyotiraditya Scindia waiting to go for his jugular, it’s up to Kamal Nath to sidestep all the landmines, ensure good governance and live up to the promise he always showed as a grassroots leader.