In 2023 assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Congress secured 66 seats, down from the 114 it had won in 2018. Hence Kamal Nath, a veteran from Sanjay Gandhi brigade, has been replaced as pradesh Congress chief.
Jitu Patwari, a former working president, will now head Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee, according to new appointments ordered by Congress president Malikarjun Kharge. It's a mege decision as humbled by the defeat, the Congress party workers at various quarters will be demoralised to face a more assertive BJP in 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
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| For 'different' reasons, Kamal Nath and Shivraj out from MP politics |
Patwari was a former legislator but in Nov 17, 2023 Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls, Patwari lost his seat to Madhu Verma of the BJP by a margin of 35,522 votes.
Kamal Nath, who had met Kharge in Delhi after poll debacle, has said he will not quit politics. "I am not going to retire. I will be with you until my last breath. Let's see how high your electricity bills go under the BJP government!" Kamal Nath had said.
The BJP not only braved through two decades old anti-incumbency, it could return to power in Madhya Pradesh by winning as many as 163 seats in the 230-member Assembly.
The 49-year-old Patwari, who was an MLA from the Rau seat, was also chairing the Madhya Pradesh Congress campaign committee. He won the election for the second time from Rau in 2018. Thereafter, Patwari was made the Minister of Higher Education, Youth and Sports Affairs in the Kamal Nath-led government.
In 2018, when Kamal Nath was appointed Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) chief, Patwari was appointed working president.
In April 2020 after Kamal Nath was toppled by the saffron outfit in Madhya Pradesh, , Patwari was appointed chairperson of the state media cell of the Congress party.
Patwari is generally knows as being close to former Congress president Rahul Gandhi.
The second leg of Bharat Jodo Yatra is likely to commence in north east India and being planned from the first week of January, 2024 --- also kick-starting election campaign for 2024.
Unlike the first which was strictly on walk; the Bharat Jodo Yatra 2.0 will be in hybrid mode - that is it will include pad-Yatras and travel by bus. The walkathon will pass through several cities and villages of west and north India.
Necessary measures will be taken in view of the hill and cold conditions of the northeast India. Of course there will be several nukkad and public meetings in cities and villages across the route.
The Bharat Jodo Yatra began on September 7 last year from Tamil Nadu's Kanyakumari and passed through Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and union territories of Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir besides three southern states of Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana,
Wayanad lawmaker Rahul Gandhi led the Yatra and addressed several public meetings and also met several groups of societies.
While the Karnataka polls win by Congress is attributed to the BharatYatra -- however, the Yatra did not yield expected dividends to the Congress party in three Hindi/Hindu heartland states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
In Telangana, the Congress could pull the carpet underneath the feet of BRS chief K Chandrashekhar Rao and his party. Moreover, there has been a gradual shift of Muslim support base towards Congress.
Now, M J Akbar, a former Congress leader, a former MoS External Affairs under PM Narendra Modi writes --
"Why does Prime Minister Narendra Modi win elections?"
and then he offers an explanation -- lucidly in his own style :
"The nub of this electoral phenomenon is the rise of electoral consciousness among underprivileged women: in the Modi decade this has accelerated from arithmetical to geometrical progression through economic empowerment and social reform."
MJ Akbar, a noted columnist and a former Editor, also says :
"....In one decision, Modi eliminated the greatest fear of the marginalised woman.
This was in reference to:
Prime Minister Modi sealed a deal with women that began with sanitation, Jan Dhan banking, kitchen-cylinders, MUDRA bank loans, and with the Garib Kalyan food security programme begun during Covid.
Five kilograms of rice or wheat, and one kilogram of dal came free to every home. Every single family in need received it. No one checked the name on the door. Caste and creed were irrelevant. The free food fed 800 million Indians at a time of existential insecurity and has now been extended to 2028. It is the largest welfare scheme in history.
"Why would women abandon the leader who had become an annadata?" he asks.
"Women are the nodal “caste” in Prime Minister Modi’s radical recharacterisation of varna. “All women have one caste,” he has said in a public speech and urged women to protect their unity to enhance their interests. His four castes are the poor, young, women, and farmers.
Poverty must be eliminated from lived experience; the young are the future; women are the guardians; and farmers feed a nation. He has defined modern governance for Indians and added a complementary challenge to casteism and communalism. Identity is defined by economics, not birth or religion." (Open magazine)
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