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Kamal Nath to be chief minister; Congress says era of change upon MP

Hindustan Times, Bhopal | ByHT Correspondent
Dec 13, 2018 11:57 PM IST

The Congress legislature party began its meeting at around 10.30 pm, many hours after Gandhi told reporters early on Thursday that a decision on the party’s three chief ministers would be taken soon.

Kamal Nath will lead the Congress government in Madhya Pradesh where it returned to power after 15 years, the party announced after a meeting of Congress legislators in state capital Bhopal. The meeting of newly-elected lawmakers, convened late on Thursday evening, came at the end of hectic discussions in Delhi and Madhya Pradesh.

“An era of change is upon MP with him at the helm,” the Congress’s official handle tweeted shortly after legislators passed a formal resolution electing Kamal Nath.

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At the meeting, he thanked Jyotiraditya Scindia for supporting his election.

Speaking to reporters afterwards, Kamal Nath said he will be meet governor Anandibehn Patel at 10.30 am on Friday and the time of swearing-in will be decided then. He also said that the party manifesto would be implemented soon.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who had earlier in the day claimed that a decision on chief ministers in the three states snatched from the BJP would be taken soon, had met Kamal Nath and the other front-runner Jyotiraditya Scindia just hours earlier. During the day, Gandhi also met the party’s central observer for Madhya Pradesh AK Antony and consulted his mother and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

As the suspense continued, Rahul Gandhi on Thursday evening tweeted a photograph with the two senior party leaders, with a quote from Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s “Bethink Yourselves”.

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time,” Gandhi, 48, said in a tweet that is being seen to signal the end of Madhya Pradesh’s wait for its next chief minister.

Watch: Kamal Nath is the new chief minister of Madhya Pradesh

Both Nath, the state’s Congress unit chief and Scindia, who chaired the party’s election campaign committee, did not contest the November 28 assembly elections.

The Congress had won 114 seats in the 230-member assembly, edging ahead of the BJP which ended at 109. The Congress is two short of the half-way mark of 116. But the party – which claimed to have the support of 121 lawmakers – has received promises of support from the Bahujan Samaj Party’s two legislators, the Samajwadi Party’s one and some of the Independents.

Nath, the nine-time Lok Sabha MP from Chhindwara was chosen by Gandhi as the state Congress chief in April over Scindia, the Lok Sabha member from Guna who is also the party’s deputy chief whip in parliament.

Nath was born in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur to businessman father Mahendra Nath and mother Leela and is an alumnus of the prestigious Doon School in Uttarakhand’s Dehradun. He is a graduate from St Xavier’s College in Kolkata. He is married to Alka and has two sons.

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