Kamal Nath resigns as Madhya Pradesh chief minister ahead of floor test

Last updated on February 9th, 2023 at 12:37 pm

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath, resigned on Friday, just a few hours before the state assembly floor test. Supreme Court of India ordered floor state, asking the state government to prove its majority in the house.

Mr. Nath stepped down fifteen months after coming to power. He announced his resignations at a press conference hosted in his residence in Bhopal at 2 pm. He told reporters, “Mera kya kasuur tha? (What was my fault). The BJP got 15 years to develop the state but it didn’t. I got just 15 months of which in two months there was a model code of conduct due to Lok Sabha election.”

In his resignation letter, submitted to governor Lalji Tandon, he wrote, “In my 40-year- long public life, I have always done politics of purity and valued democratic norms and given priority to it.” He added, “All that has happened in Madhya Pradesh in the last two weeks is a new chapter in the weakening of democratic principles.”

Mr. Nath accused BJP of conspiring against him. He said BJP has been plotting against him since day one. He added, “The BJP thinks they can defeat me by defeating my state, but that will not happen…I have proved my majority on the floor of the House several times during the past 15 years…but the BJP betrayed the people of state by destabilising the government.”

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Mr. Nath’s resignation caused a major blow to Congress, which lost one more state from its kitty.

Madhya Pradesh crisis started last week when senior Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia moved to the BJP, followed by 22 of his loyalists MLAs, who resigned from the state assembly, turning wheels for Congress and reducing government into a minority.

The newly-converted MLAs of BJP were placed in a resort at Bengaluru in Karnataka, a BJP-ruled state. It was a planned move taken to limit all attempts of the Congress leadership to try and convince them to take back their resignations.

At the time CM resigned, Congress’ strength in the house of 205 declined to 99, and BJP stood ahead of it with 106 members.