Congress holds strategy meet ahead of MP polls, resolves to unseat BJP govt

With less than 6 months left for the Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, the opposition Congress on Monday, July 3, held a strategy meeting here where it drew up a plan to take on the BJP government and make corruption a key election plank.

Congress general secretary K.C. Venugopal, Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath and AICC in-charge of MP Jai Prakash Agrawal chaired the meeting of the state's political affairs committee which lasted for two hours.

During the meeting, party leaders primarily focused on making corruption a key election issue to take on the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government, Congress sources said.

Senior party leaders of the state attended the meeting.

According to the sources, the Congress is going to raise corruption, price rise and state's rising debt, among other issues, vociferously in run-up to the elections likely to be held by the year-end.

"Corruption is going to be our major poll plank," a senior Congress leader told PTI.

"MP is ready to bring back the Congress Party and remove this illegitimate BJP government, which has only looted and destroyed the state," Venugopal tweeted post the meeting. "We will fight the elections in Madhya Pradesh and win...", he told ANI.

Emerging from the meeting held at Nath's official bungalow, Venugopal expressed confidence his party would form the next government in MP.

Giving details of the gathering, Congress MLA and former state minister Jitu Patwari told reporters that party leaders resolved to work unitedly to unseat the "corrupt" BJP government in Madhya Pradesh.

Patwari claimed the BJP government, which assumed office in March 2020 after the collapse of the Kamal Nath-led Congress dispensation, had "failed" on all counts and people are eagerly waiting to vote it out.

The last Assembly polls held on November 28, 2018, threw up a hung Assembly, with the Congress emerging as the single largest party with 114 seats in the 230-member House. The BJP won 109 seats.

The Congress, after 15 years in Opposition, formed a coalition government under Kamal Nath, but it fell in March 2020 after several MLAs loyal to Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia resigned and joined the BJP, paving the way for Shivraj Singh Chouhan to return as chief minister.

With agency inputs