Rewind to 1980. In a Lok Sabha election rally in support of her party’s 33-year-old debutant candidate Kamal Nath at Chhindwara’s Shukla Ground Stadium, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi described Nath as her “third son.”
Nath, a close friend of Gandhi’s younger son Sanjay Gandhi since the Doon School-Dehradun days, justified the former PM’s choice of fielding him in place of third-time sitting MP Gargi Shankar Mishra. He retained the Chhindwara seat for Congress by 70,000-plus votes.
Fast-forward to 2024. The nine-time former Lok Sabha member from Chhindwara and ex-Madhya Pradesh CM kept the Gandhi family and the top leadership of the party in Delhi and Bhopal on edge for three days. The swirling buzz had already raised enough dust over Nath and his son Nakul joining the BJP.
Days later, Nath ended the speculation by urging people to join Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, which will enter the state on March 2. This, coupled with the announcement that Nath will himself be part of the 5-day yatra in the state, brought a sigh of relief to the party.
Aged 77, when most politicians retire or plan to quit politics, Nath continues to be the focus of MP politics not just in Congress circles, but also in the ruling BJP.
Born in a leading business family in UP’s Kanpur in 1946, Nath, a commerce graduate from Kolkata’s Xavier’s College, joined the Indian Youth Congress in 1968. His subsequent political growth was fuelled by his alleged assistance in toppling the Janata Party government by creating rifts between Morarji Desai and Charan Singh.
His sustained contacts with Raj Narain (who had defeated Indira Gandhi from Rae Bareli in 1977) are believed to have been behind the socialist leader advising Charan Singh to form the government at the Centre with Congress support in 1979. But the government fell as the Congress withdrew support in January 1980.
It was this shrewd maneuvering that pushed him close to the Gandhi family. It also led the Congress to make him a candidate for the Chhindwara seat in 1980.
Since 1980, Nath has won the Chhindwara LS seat nine times (losing only once in 1997 to BJP veteran Sunderlal Patwa). The seat was won by his wife Alka Nath in 1996 (after Nath was denied the ticket over being named in a hawala scam) and in 2019 by elder son Nakul Nath, when Nath was the state CM.
In May 2018, just six months before the assembly polls, Nath was made the MP Congress president. He guided the party to power in the state after 15 years with the help of four independents and three BSP and SP MLAs. But the government fell in March 2020 following the resignation of Jyotiraditya Scindia and 22 MLAs. Still, Nath continued to enjoy the party’s confidence despite losing most seats in the November 2020 bypolls to 26 assembly seats.
Three years later, Nath was again projected as the party’s CM face in MP despite murmurs of dissent from other state party leaders.
Known to be an ardent devotee of Lord Hanuman, it was Nath who infused doses of ‘soft-Hindutva’ into Congress’ state politics months before the 2023 assembly polls.
However, open differences between Nath and another former CM, Digvijaya Singh, allowed the BJP to project the Congress as a divided house.
Though the Congress suffered one of the worst defeats against the MP BJP losing the 2023 elections by 66-163 seats, Nath managed to maintain his hold on Chhindwara, as Congress won all seven seats.
Counted among the wealthiest politicians in the country (ADR 2023 MP Assembly polls report put his and wife Alka Nath’s total assets to be worth Rs 134 crore), Nath has had his share of controversies too.
The BJP has regularly targeted Nath, alleging his links to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Earlier this month, the Delhi High Court gave time to a Special Investigation Team to file its report on a plea seeking action against Nath for his alleged role in a violent mob attack at the Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib in Delhi in 1984. Nath has always refuted any involvement in that incident.
In April 2019, the I-T Department conducted searches at properties of Kamal Nath’s key aides and claimed to have found Rs 281 crore in unaccounted cash, including Rs 20 crore paid to the Congress HQ in Delhi “through hawala.”