Veteran Congress leaders Digvijaya Singh and Kamal Nath have found themselves confronting each other once again, reopening old wounds within the Madhya Pradesh Congress and casting a shadow over Rahul Gandhi’s efforts to rebuild the party through his Sangathan Srijan Abhiyan.
The renewed spat began after Digvijaya Singh, in a recent podcast interview, claimed that the collapse of the Kamal Nath-led Government in 2020 was not driven by ideology but by a clash of personalities between Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia. Singh recalled attempts at reconciliation, including a dinner meeting and the involvement of a top industrialist, but said lingering distrust between Nath and Scindia ultimately triggered defections that brought down the 15-month-old Congress regime.
Kamal Nath responded two days later with a pointed post on X. Without dragging the issue further, he said Scindia’s resentment was fueled by the perception that Digvijaya Singh was “running the Government.” Nath wrote, “Apart from personal ambition, Jyotiraditya Scindia felt that Digvijaya Singh was running the Government. In this resentment, he broke away Congress MLAs and toppled our Government.”
The exchange has landed at an awkward moment for the Congress. Just weeks earlier, Rahul Gandhi launched an ambitious organisational restructuring drive in Bhopal, appointing new district presidents and stressing unity as the party’s only path to revival in Madhya Pradesh. That effort now risks being overshadowed by public sparring between two of its tallest leaders, both of whom were central to the events of 2020 when Scindia led 22 MLAs into the BJP camp, paving the way for the return of a Shivraj Singh Chouhan Government.
Party insiders admit the timing is troubling. State Congress president Jitu Patwari has himself cautioned that factionalism is a “cancer” eating into the organisation, while political observers say repeated reminders of the 2020 debacle erode public faith in the party’s ability to present a credible alternative.
Scindia, now a Union minister in the BJP Government, has declined to add fuel to the fire, telling reporters he would not “talk about the past.” But his silence has done little to stem the unease. The open confrontation between Digvijaya Singh and Kamal Nath has not only revived bitter memories of Congress’s fall from power but also raised questions over whether Rahul Gandhi’s call for unity can truly take root in a state long marked by infighting.
