In another jolt to Kamalnath, the ruling BJP finally clinched the Amarwara Assembly by-election in Madhya Pradesh on Saturday, defeating the Congress candidate by 3,027 votes. The BJP’s win has however come as another setback for Kamal Nath in his Chhindwara stronghold.
The Amarwara Assembly seat (Scheduled Tribes-reserved) falls under the Chhindwara Lok Sabha constituency, which Nath has represented seven times since 1980.
The BJP’s Kamlesh Shah was trailing in 16 rounds of counting of votes before he made a dramatic comeback in the last five rounds to defeat Congress candidate Dheeran Sah Invati, the son of a local tribal seer Sukhram dada, the chief of Anchalkund Dham.
Following the declaration of results, former Chhindwara MP Nakul Nath, the son of state Congress stalwart and former chief minister Kamal Nath, alleged that this was a “defeat” for the BJP. “The current BJP candidate, who has been a three-time MLA from the Congress party, had won the last election by about 25,000 votes under the leadership of Honorable Kamal Nath ji. Victory by a small margin of votes in today’s by-election with the help of the government administration is equal to a shameful defeat,” he alleged in a post on X.
His son Nakul won it in 2019 but lost in the recent Lok Sabha polls to the BJP’s Bunty Vivek Sahu by over 1.13 lakh votes.
The then sitting Congress MLA of Amarwara and long-time Nath loyalist, Kamlesh Shah, who belongs to the erstwhile Harrai royal family, had defected to the BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, which necessitated the bypoll in which he fought on the latter’s ticket.
In the wake of the Congress’s debacle in the Assembly elections as well as the Lok Sabha polls, and with his son Nakul no longer an MP on his home turf, this bypoll was another chance for Nath to signal his hold on the region.
Leading the charge from the front, Nath tried to pull off a win that would put brakes on the BJP’s juggernaut in the state, where it won all 29 Lok Sabha seats and achieved a landslide victory in the November 2023 Assembly elections with 163 seats out of 230.
Nath spearheaded the Congress campaign in the bypoll on an emotive plank of “betrayal” by Kamlesh Shah. This has been a running theme of the Nath campaign. In the Assembly elections, he had campaigned on this plank, raking up Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia’s defection to the BJP in early 2020, which had then brought down his government.
After the Congress’s rout in the Assembly elections under his leadership, Nath had withdrawn to Chhindwara, where he campaigned along with his son to ensure that the latter could retain his parliamentary seat.
However, the friction between Nakul and Kamlesh flared up in the run up to the election, and soon the tribal MLA switched to the BJP camp. Later, the father-son duo blamed him for their defeat in the Lok Sabha election.
During his campaign for the Assembly polls, Nath routinely raked up Shah’s alleged betrayal in the hope that this would create a resonance among people, but in vain.
Nath then launched his campaign from the Anchal Kund Dham where he sought the blessings from the shrine, something he did four decades ago when he began his politics journey in the state.
To counter Kamlesh’s personal connect with the locals and his down-to-earth image, the Congress sought to play the religion card in the bypoll by taking a leaf out of the BJP’s playbook, given Dheeran Sah Invati’s identity as the son of the Anchalkund Dham’s chief.
During the Assembly elections, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had paid a visit to the Anchalkund Dham, a site revered by tribals, and also met Sukhram and about 25 prominent people.
In the Amarwara bypoll, the Congress could not gain momentum due to various factors. Party functionaries said Nath was unable to campaign effectively in the constituency and that Nakul was seen only four days before the election.
Also, the Congress was “unable to sow divisions within the BJP by taking advantage of the resentment of BJP discontent Monika Bhati, the daughter of Gondwana Gantantra Party (GGP) leader Mandmohan Bhati,” said a party functionary. In the 2022 Assembly polls, Monika had contested against Kamlesh Shah, unsuccessfully, on the BJP ticket.
Meanwhile, in this bypoll the GGP candidate finished third by getting 28, 723 votes, which the Congress believes might have also damaged its prospects in a closely contested election.
Kamlesh is known to have a strong support base in Amarwara from where he had won thrice earlier. Earlier, his grandfather Raja Udaybhan Shah and mother Rani Shailkumari had also been the Congress MLAs from the seat.
His father Ugra Pratap Shah and brother Bhupendra Shah had been the Congress’s district presidents.
Kamlesh’s younger sister Kamini Shah had been in the BJP earlier. His elder sister Keshar Netam, a member of the district panchayat, has also joined the BJP.
A section of the BJP leaders believe that the speculations surrounding Nath’s exit from the Congress just before the Lok Sabha polls and the subsequent defection of a large number of Chhindwara Congress leaders “sealed his fate even in the Assembly by-election”.
The BJP also campaigned on the plank of a “double-engine sarkar” as they pitched for the region’s growth in hope that the voters would be encouraged by the presence of a BJP government in the state and at the Centre.
To help Kamlesh’s bid, the BJP focused on strengthening its booth-level management in the Chhindwara belt, a strategy which yielded the party rich dividends in the previous two elections.
Bolstered by the victory in Chhindwara in the Lok Sabha elections, Chief Minister Mohan Yadav had taken charge of the bypoll campaign and addressed multiple rallies over the past few months. Countering
the Congress’s religion card, Yadav showcased his government’s efforts at cow protection in the state.
