'Bringing Down Such a Govt is No Sin': Shivraj Singh Chouhan Justifies Power-grab from Former CM Kamal Nath

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan here on Friday attacked former CM Kamal Nath saying he had a long list of reasons why the latter lost power.

Chouhan wrested power from Congress's Kamal Nath who resigned as Chief Minister in March earlier in the year following a breakdown of his government.

Nath in recent public meetings has questioned his government being brought down prematurely, and said the incident wasn't his fault; he was just attempting to "crack down on unlawful elements and attain public welfare".

Chouhan, at a poll rally in Mandsaur responded to Nath's statements and asked rhetorically how many of his predecessor's mistakes he should list.

“We used to offer scholarships to poor students, you discontinued this. We used to offer Rs 16,000 for nutrition to pregnant women, you also stopped it. You even stopped payments under Kanyadan yojana and also under Sambal scheme which covered post death compensation for the poor,” said Chouhan.

He added that Nath had "robbed" students of laptops under the state's merit scheme and stopped teerth darshan scheme. According to the CM, Jyotiraidtya Scindia and his aides "saved the state" and otherwise, no would have knew "what would have happened to Madhya Pradesh" if the Kamal Nath government ran its full five-year term. "Bringing down such government is no sin," he said.

Chouhan added that his government had offered much more to farmers than just loan waivers; including payments on crop insurance, provision of 0% interest, Rs 4,000 per annum state’s contribution for Kisan Samman Nidhi, among other measures.

He said Rahul Gandhi in 2018 had claimed the announcement of a farm loan waiver within ten days of Congress being elected. However, Chouhan said, the Congress government later claimed that only short term loans would be waived off, and then they said current account loans wouldn't be included in the scheme and also said loans only upto March 2018 would be written-off.

"Then too the Congress government had burdened co-operative societies with half the burden of waived-off loans worth Rs 6,000 crore," said Chouhan, adding this "kind of jugglery" was only possible for the Congress party and not for him.