The Congress has accepted defeat ahead of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls slated for the year-end by declaring that it is open to joining hands with ideologically similar parties, BJP’s national vice-president, Prabhat Jha, has said.

The newly appointed media coordination committee chief for MP polls and Rajya Sabha MP, Jha told The Statesman during a visit to Gwalior that the influence of the newly appointed Congress state chief, Kamal Nath, and election campaign committee chairman, Jyotiraditya Scindia, was limited to their parliamentary constituencies, Chhindwara and Guna-Shivpuri (part of erstwhile Gwalior estate), respectively.

“Inviting other political parties to join hands represents the acceptance of Congress defeat ahead of polls. So BJP is not worried over the formation of such an alliance,” Jha said.

Attacking Nath and Scindia, he said, “Both leaders come from the elite class, one is an industrialist and the other comes from a royal family, whereas BJP leaders in the state work at the grassroots level as ordinary workers.”

However, he praised Congress leader Digvijay Singh and said the two-term chief minister “has kept a grip even at the panchayat level and his supporters are spread across the state though Congress has sidelined him in preference for Nath and Scindia”.

Jha said Congress leaders barring Digvijay Singh, and including Nath, Scindia, Ajay Singh, Arun Yadav and Kantilal Bhuria had not organised any mega protest or hunger strike during all the years they have been in the opposition in MP.

Jha said the Congress alliance with the Samajwadi Party in the last Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh had sunk the SP there.

“Nath and Scindia were Union ministers for many years but what have they done for Madhya Pradesh? I demand they release white papers in this regard,” he added.

“Kamal Nath belongs to the Khatri community and is an outsider in Madhya Pradesh. The late Sanjay Gandhi gave him a Congress ticket from Chhindwara Lok Sabha constituency but he does not regularly reside here. I am also from Bihar and came during the Emergency period but I have continued in MP (Gwalior) for 42 years,” Jha said.

He is known to be an arch political rival of Scindia. His effusive praise of Digvijay Singh is clearly indicative of the BJP’s gameplan to fuel factionalism in the Congress.