Congress leaders in MP unite against Chief Minister

Keen to revive its fortunes, the Madhya Pradesh Congress on Monday put up a rare show of unity to target Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for his role in the scam in recruitment for state government jobs.

Senior leaders Digvijay Singh, Kamal Nath, and Jyotiraditya Scindia – who otherwise do not see eye-to-eye – addressed a joint press conference in Bhopal demanding a CBI probe against Chouhan for his “role” in the purported scam.

Digvijaya Singh, a former chief minister and AICC general secretary, accused Chouhan of being involved in the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board (MPPEB) scam. The MPPEB, widely known by its Hindi acronym Vyapam, conducts examinations for various government positions, including medical officers, engineers and auditors for the government.

Besides the three top leaders, senior counsels K T S Tulsi, Vivek Tankha, Leader of the Opposition Satyadev Katare and state unit chief Arun Yadav were also on the dais.
Katare has been persistently raising the Vyapam issue. It is for the first time all the factional leaders have put up a joint appearance to throw their weight behind Katare.

They accused the Special Task Force (STF) probing the recruitment scam of “tampering” with evidence to be submitted to court by omitted parts that said Chouhan had recommended jobs for contractual teachers.

Singh said he had filed a statement under oath in the high court claiming that the chief minister was mentioned 48 times in a document seized by the STF during the course of investigations into the scam.

However, the Congress leader claimed that the STF was pressurised to change the words “CM” with just “minister” at 21 places in the document. At seven places, the word chief minister was replaced with “Uma Bharati” and by “Ms” and “Raj Bhavan” at one place each.

Madhya Pradesh government spokesperson Narottam Mishra rejected the allegations as “baseless and without any substance”. National leaders of the BJP also backed Chouhan, who was once considered a perfect foil to Narendra Modi.

“The Congress’ allegations are bizarre,” BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao said. A section of the Congress feels that Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where BJP has been in power for the last 12 years, is the “low-hanging fruit” that could be plucked to chart the Grand Old Party’s revival after the successive electoral debacles.

These leaders believe that the BJP has managed to win these states as factionalism is rife in the state units of the Congress.