Madhya Pradesh Congress Chief Kamal Nath filed his nomination papers on Thursday from the Chhindwara assembly seat for the 17 November assembly elections in the state.
Accompanied by his son and Lok Sabha Member Nakul Nath and a large number of supporters, Kamal Nath filed his nomination.
Though the Congress has not officially declared its chief ministerial face for these assembly polls, Nath is seen as the frontrunner to become the CM again if the party manages to get a majority in the polls. Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister and Congress Rajya Sabha Member Digvijaya Singh had also endorsed Nath as the chief ministerial face earlier.
Chhindwara is Nath’s bastion and he has been elected a Lok Sabha member nine times from there.
In 2018, after becoming the Madhya Pradesh Congress President in May, Kamal Nath led the party to a victory in the assembly polls in November that year. The Congress subsequently formed the government in the state.
Kamal Nath was made the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. However, as Nath was till then a Lok Sabha member and had not contested the assembly polls, he had to contest in a by-election and win within six months of becoming the CM in order to remain in the CM’s seat.
One of Nath’s closest confidantes, Deepak Saxena, who had won as Congress MLA in the 2018 assembly polls from Chhindwara assembly seat, relinquished his candidature and Nath subsequently contested the by-elections from Saxena’s Chhindwara seat and won as an MLA.
The following year, Kamal Nath’s son, Nakul Nath contested on the Chhindwara Lok Sabha seat in the 2019 general elections. He was the only Congress candidate to win in Madhya Pradesh out of the 29 Lok Sabha seats of the state.