Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath on Thursday was replaced as the Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the State Assembly, as Congress chief Sonia Gandhi accepted his resignation from the position of the Congress Legislature Party (CLP).
Former Minister and seven-time lawmaker Dr. Govind Singh will be the new LoP.
“I visited the Bhopal residence of the newly appointed LoP of MP Assembly Shri Govind Singh . Congratulating hi, I also expressed my hope that he will successfully discharge his duties and strengthen the party,” Mr. Nath tweeted.
He, however, will continue as the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief and is expected to lead the party in the next Assembly elections scheduled in the latter part of 2023.
Senior leaders of the the PCC recently held a meeting and took the unusual step of declaring on its own the party will go to the polls under his leadership.
Mr. Nath is said to have resigned from the CLP leader’s post to stick to the norm of ‘one person-one post’ policy.
Earlier, in a communication addressed to Mr. Nath, All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal said, “The Congress president has accepted your resignation from the post of Leader, Congress Legislature Party (CLP), Madhya Pradesh with immediate effect”. The party chief “has approved the proposal to appoint Dr. Govind Singh as the CLP leader”, he added.
A confidant of Digvijaya
The new CLP leader from Lahar constituency in Bhind district is believed to be a confidant of former Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh. His political constituency is a part of the Gwalior-Chambal region, home turf of Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia.
Dr. Singh told reporters in Bhopal, “I have been raising people’s issues in the Assembly in the past and will continue to do so in future also as the CLP leader. He [Kamal Nath] has shared his responsibilities with me and I’ll work as his associate and question the BJP government over public issues.”
The ruling BJP, however, took a dig at Mr. Nath’s removal from the post of LoP.
BJP spokesperson Pankaj Chaturvedi, who is a confidant of Mr. Scindia, tweeted, “We had heard that one resigns from the post of LoP by tendering his resignation to the Speaker of the Assembly, not the owners of the party. Anyways, Kamal Nath ji can do anything. Nath ji, it is impossible to escape from the moves of Digvijaya Singh.”
The change in the party’s Madhya Pradesh unit comes in the middle of changes to other units as well. On Wednesday, it appointed a new chief for Haryana- Udai Bhan, a loyalist of former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. And it followed with a restructuring in Himachal Pradesh, where the Lok Sabha member from Mandi, Pratibha Virbhadra Singh (wife of the former Chief Minister, the late Virbhadra Singh), has become the new president along with four working presidents.
