Jyotiraditya Scindia quits Congress, 22 MLAs resign; Madhya Pradesh government crisis deepens

Chief minister Kamal Nath’s government in Madhya Pradesh (MP) was plunged into crisis on Tuesday when 22 Congress legislators, including six ministers, tendered their resignations. The development followed senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia announcing his resignation from Congress minutes after Scindia met Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with Union home minister and Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) former national president, Amit Shah, in Delhi.

While the Congress legislature party passed a resolution supporting Nath on Tuesday evening, BJP legislators were flown from Bhopal to Delhi.

On Tuesday, six ministers also resigned from Nath’s cabinet: Health minister Tulsi Silavat; food and civil supplies minsiter Pradyumn Singh Tomar; labour minister Mahendra Singh Sisodia; transport minister Govind Singh Rajput; women and child development minister Imarti Devi; and school education minister Prabhuram Chauhdary. In a letter to the governor, sent on Tuesday, chief minister Kamal Nath sought the immediate removal of the six.

Most of the Congress legislators who resigned have been incommunicado since Monday night and are in Bengaluru. The CLP further said that the BJP feared the “tough action” taken by the state on issues like e-tendering and the scam involving examinations conducted by Vyaysayik Pareeksha Mandal (Vyapam).

Meanwhile, former chief minister of MP and BJP’s national vice-president Shivraj Singh Chouhan described Tuesday’s developments as “an internal matter of the Congress.”