Congress president Rahul Gandhi, his mother and predecessor Sonia Gandhi and senior leaders of the UPA and other allies will attend the swearing-in ceremony of chief minister elect of Madhya Pradesh Kamal Nath and his cabinet in Bhopal on Monday, Congress sources said.
The Congress has come back to power in Madhya Pradesh after a gap of 15 years after defeating, by a thin margin, the popular chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan of the BJP. The Congress won 114 seats against 109 of the BJP in the 230-member assembly. The Congress is supported by two MLA of the BSP, one MLA of the SP and four independents.
The Congress has been celebrating in a big manner its victory over the BJP in Madhya Pradesh, which was orchestrated by senior leaders like Kamal Nath. According to the Congress, the party is planning to make the swearing-in ceremony a major event. “We want to show our coalition partners and the ruling BJP that we have emerged in a big manner,” said the senior Congress leader.
The swearing-in ceremony is being organised at the massive Jamburi Maidan near the BHEL plant in east Bhopal. The ceremony is likely to be attended by coalition partners like Akhilesh Yadav of the SP, Mayawati of BSP, Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah and former prime minister Manmohan Singh. “We have invited our UPA coalition members,” said a source from the Congress.
Meanwhile, chief minister-elect Kamal Nath has started the exercise of cabinet formation and selecting members from various factions of the Congress. Nearly a dozen MLAs of the Jyotiraditya Scindia camp are likely to become ministers, while the lion's share of ministries will go to the faction of Digvijaya Singh, who helped the Congress win by coordinating the various groups in the party.