As election heat grips Madhya Pradesh, the BJP has, over the course of the week, brought up old issues to target Congress’ State president and former Chief Minister Kamal Nath.
On Sunday, a day after the CBI filed a chargesheet against Congress leader Jagdish Tytler in connection with the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984, BJP State president V.D. Sharma questioned the role of Mr. Nath in the same, calling him the “third likely accused” besides Mr. Tytler and another jailed Congress leader [Sajjan Kumar].
He said that it “was likely that the CBI will soon bring the truth about Mr. Nath” in the riots that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in Delhi on October 31, 1984.
Hitting back at these allegations, Mr. Nath – who is leading the Congress’ campaign for the 2023 Assembly poll – said that there was no FIR against him and a commission formed to probe the 1984 case and set up by the BJP had said that he was innocent. “In 45 years of my political life, no one has raised a finger at me but Mr. Sharma is saying all this to cover up his own misdeeds,” said Mr. Nath on Monday.
On Tuesday, Mr. Sharma fired a fresh salvo, this time questioning Mr. Nath’s alleged “collusion” with China. “I am saying this in all seriousness that when you [Mr. Nath] were the Union Commerce Minister, you were accused of colluding with China,” he said without divulging further on the issue. Mr. Nath was a Union Minister till 2014 when the then Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance was voted out.
In response to the allegation, MP Congress media-in-charge Piyush Babele called the statement “shameful” and questioned the BJP’s own record of “hobnobbing with China”.
In recent months, the BJP has often attacked Mr. Nath on his governance record while being the Chief Minister for 15 months between late 2018 and mid-2020, while also bringing up his age (76 years) to question his ability to govern, often in a mocking tone. However, this apparently is a new line of attack where past issues are also dug up.
Political commentator Rakesh Dikshit says that while the BJP has been focussed on attacking the two main leaders of the Congress – Mr. Nath and Digvijaya Singh, another former CM – it realises that fatigue will set in if it continues to question their governance records.
“They use “Commission Nath” for Mr. Nath and ‘Mr. Bantadhar’ [or ‘Mr. Debacle’, a catchphrase from BJP’s 2003 campaign] for Mr. Singh but that strategy has its limitation on the face of a long-standing anti-incumbency that the BJP itself faces. So drilling new messaging periodically into the minds of the cadre is imperative, and turning back the pages of history can be one way of doing so. However, this is flogging a dead horse as far as today’s MP politics is concerned,” he says.
