The Speaker has issued notice to 22 rebel MLAs, to clarify if they have quit voluntarily or under pressure. BJP is seeking a floor test on March 16. It seems the fate of ongoing political crisis has stuck into legal tangle. “Since the government is in minority, we are going to request the Governor and the Speaker for a floor test on March 16 when the Budget session begins,” BJP chief whip Narottam Mishra said.

Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh has said that the floor test cannot take place as the resignations submitted by rebel MLAs have not been accepted. He alleged that the Congress MLAs are being held confined in Bengaluru and that they might return to the Congress. The breakaway MLAs have issued video statements to say that they will remain loyal to Scindia but not, necessarily, to BJP.

Anti-defection law provides that if MLAs defect as a group, having two third members, they would not be disqualified. The defecting members, who quit Congress along with Scindia, however, can vote in the Rajya Sabha election. In that event the BJP will get two seats and the Congress one, most likely Digvijaya Singh.

Latest reports say that 22 MLAs of Scindia faction, who are in Bengaluru, want to return to the Congress fold. These MLAs and ministers did not know that Scindia would join the BJP. They thought it was a fight for a Rajya Sabha ticket, said state Congress media department chairperson Shobha Oza. “It is a clash of ideologies, now if they are asked to join BJP. They are not willing to switch loyalties,” she added. In the event of these MLAs joining BJP, they lose membership of the Assembly.

While it’s true that Congress has lost another prominent politician with Jyotiraditya Scindia joining the BJP, the bigger, immediate headache for the tottering party is the future of the government of Madhya Pradesh. Congress’s tenuous hopes of saving the 15-month-old Kamal Nath ministry rests on wooing back most of the rebel MLAs belonging to Scindia faction. Long unable to widen his clout in the faction-ridden MP Congress with veterans Digvijaya Singh and Kamal Nath ceding virtually no grounds, Scindia has cut a very sorry figure in recent months.

Despite campaigning hard in the 2018 MP assembly elections, Scindia did not have numbers to press his claim for the chief minister’s post. Rahul, the then Congress President whom Scinida is said to be close, could have rejigged the state Congress unit with Scindia at the helm. But to add insult to injury, Kamal Nath continues to head both posts. Defeated in Lok Sabha polls, Scindia’s fortune hit rock bottom, with even the prospects of a Rajya Sabha seat in the upcoming elections becoming a bone of contention.

His family’s long association with the BJP and the party’s current dominance — coupled with a Rajya Sabha seat and a potential union cabinet berth—may have influenced Scindia’s decision even as a leaderless Congress floundering and ambitious young netas have found themselves blocked by party’s old guards. Sachin Pilot, though better accommodated than Scindia, hasn’t made peace with Ashok Ghelot, pipping him to Rajasthan CM post.

Ironically, the likes of Digvijaya and Gehlot were beneficiaries of the party preferring them to senior netas in 1990. Moreover, the party continues to equate commitment to the Congress with reposing faith in the ineffectual Gandhi family stewardship. This has become unwieldy with BJP’s national dominance posing searching questions to the Congress. Those like Sachin Pilot and Bhupesh Baghel may be the answer to Congress’s failure to tap new voters. After all, the Congress presidency routinely changed hands until the 1970s, before the dominance of the Gandhi family began. Congress should hold a fair internal election for the post of President with younger politicians like Pilot, Baghel in the fray, and Gandhis studiously staying out. Else, the party is looking like a slow train wreck. (IPA Service)