The crisis brewing in the Madhya Pradesh Congress for over a month culminated on Tuesday with the dramatic exit of the party stalwart Jyotiraditya Scindia along with 21 MLAs including six ministers, a move that is certain to cause the downfall of 15-month-old Kamal Nath government in the State.

Scindia, whose bid to enter the Rajya Sabha in the elections scheduled this month was reportedly being blocked by Nath and Digvijaya Singh, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday morning as part of a reported deal to secure a seat in the Upper House while his supporter MLAs are also set to cross over to the BJP.

“This is a path that has been drawing itself out over the last year,” said Scindia in his resignation letter to Sonia Gandhi that he posted on twitter. “While my aim and purpose remain the same as it has always been from the very beginning, to serve the people of my State and country, I believe am unable to do this anymore within this party,” he said.

With the resignations of the Congress MLAs, the majority mark in the 230-member MP Assembly will drop to 106. The Congress will have 95 MLAs and the BJP, with 107 MLAs, can form a government. SP has one and BSP has two MLAs in the Assembly with four independents.

BJP meeting

BJP’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who was in Bhopal overseeing the political transition, is Vice-President in the central party but hopes to reclaim the CM’s post which he had held for three terms before losing narrowly to the Congress in 2018 Assembly elections. A meeting of the BJP’s highest decision-making body, the parliamentary board, was likely late on Tuesday to deliberate over this issue.

The colourful turn of events on Holi started with Scindia’s meeting with Modi and Shah who was subsequently closeted with the BJP chief JP Nadda before an emergency meeting of the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC) was called late in the evening. While the chorus against Congress high command, especially the party chief Sonia Gandhi and the General Secretary Rahul Gandhi’s inability to stem internal factionalism grew, the BJP seemed ready to roll out the red carpet for the Gwalior strongman whose grandmother Vijayaraje Scindia was one of the founder members of the BJP.

Friday is the last date to file nominations for the three Rajya Sabha seats falling vacant from Madhya Pradesh in April. While there was no official announcement from the BJP till late evening, the chronology of events with 21 MLAs being flown to Bengaluru on March 9 through three chartered planes and Scindia announcing his resignation on twitter and meeting the PM and Amit Shah indicated that the decision to induct the former Congress Minister into the BJP through the Rajya Sabha route had already been taken.

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