Madhya Pradesh election 2023 | Kamal Nath's government is 'fully corrupt,' alleges Jyotiraditya Scindia

Kamal Nath ran a "fully corrupt" government in Madhya Pradesh and the way he told MLAs and people as the chief minister to "chalo, chalo (go, go)," saying he had no time, people also told him to "chalo, chalo" from the Chief Minister’s chair, BJP leader Jyotiraditya Scindia told News18.

In an interview during his campaign on Sunday, the Union civil aviation minister also said he has no greed for the chief minister’s chair as he gave credit to CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan for transforming the state.

“The reason we are where we are today in Madhya Pradesh — 80% or 90% of it is due to Chouhan. He has transformed the state,” Scindia told News18. He also rejected suggestions that Chouhan had been sidelined.

“Where do you not see Shivraj Singh Chouhan? He is campaigning the hardest with multiple rallies daily. It is a composite team of the BJP which is fighting the election,” Scindia told News18.

Scindia, a Rajya Sabha MP, is not contesting the assembly election unlike seven of his other BJP colleagues from Parliament. The onerous responsibility of delivering the 34 seats of his stronghold Gwalior-Chambal region rests on Scindia’s shoulders after he got 26 of these seats for the Congress in the 2018 elections. Scindia later brought down the Kamal Nath government after his loyalist MLAs resigned.

“Anyone who wilfully and clearly disobeys the vows they have taken and does vaada-khilafi, that is unacceptable to me,” Scindia said on why he brought down the Nath government in 2020.

Whose loans did Nath waive off? I ask in my public meetings whose farm loans got waived off…no one says yes. Loans are not waived off by distributing fake certificates. How will it be done unless you pay the amount to the farmer in cooperative banks? You distributed certificates but the loans were not waived off. The loans were ultimately waived off by Shivraj Singh Chouhan as the chief minister. He waived off Rs 2,500 crore of 12 lakh farmers by paying money directly into their loan accounts in cooperative banks.

Kamal Nath runs a fully corrupt government. It was a government of 3Cs — cut, commission and corruption. Kamal Nath as CM always said ‘chalo chalo’ to MPs and ministers and even the public, saying he does not have the time — "toh janta ne bhi keh diya unko chalo chalo."

I do not want to say if I did the right thing or not, but see the reaction of the public to my statements. Anyone who willfully and clearly disobeys the vows they have taken and does "vaada-khilafi," is unacceptable to me. There was no development in Madhya Pradesh till 2003 under Digvijaya Singh’s rule. What Kamal Nath did in 2018 was to put a halt in the journey from "bimaru" Madhya Pradesh to "bemisal" Madhya Pradesh.

I am a worker of the party. I have no greed for the CM’s chair — my family never had any greed for the chair. My father never had any greed for it and my grandmother also never had any such greed. This is the history of the Scindia family. In 2018, I had agreed in one second that Kamal Nath should be made chief minister. If I had any greed, would I have said so? I have greed and ambition for the development and progress of the people. I am not in any race for a chair.

Where do you not see Shivraj Singh Chouhan? He is campaigning the hardest. It is a composite team of the BJP which is fighting the election. I would say the reason we are where we are today in Madhya Pradesh — 80% or 90% of it — is due to Shivraj Singh Chouhan. He has transformed the state.

You have to understand the strategy behind this. BJP and Congress both have their strong seats in MP. We have to protect our strong seats and put up a very strong candidate in Congress’s strong seats. We have put up our MPs in the fight from seats which we have not won for a long time and are Congress strongholds. So the Congress’s strong seats are no longer their strong seats while we continue to protect our strongholds.

It absolutely is. In addition to that, BJP’s track record in the last three years is itself a game-changer. You have never seen this kind of development — look at Gwalior-Chambal or Malwa. Taking the water from Narmada River upstream to our villages and small towns and across Malwa… new dams being built, new railway lines, new airport in Gwalior. It is a game-changer on multiple fronts. Social, health, education, infrastructure — across sectors, we have a game-changer.

Power, roads, irrigation — look at the multiple-level changes here that have come since 2003. That is the BJP’s record before the people.

Ask the people of MP. Go back to 2003, what was the state of MP’s roads or electricity or irrigation? You did not know where the road ended and potholes started. There was no electricity — just 5,000 MW was there till 2003. There was no new irrigation facility by the Congress. Today, 49 lakh hectares of land is irrigated in MP.