Congress president Rahul Gandhi has been entrusted with the task of choosing the next chief-minister of Madhya Pradesh to break the impasse.

After much dilly-dallying during the past couple of days, Congress has now secured majority with BSP (with two seats) propping it up to gain simple majority of 116 seats in the 230-member strong Legislative Assembly. Congress has thus unseated the BJP from three (Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan) out of the five States which voted during the past three weeks.

Jubilant Congress MLAs met in Bhopal at the State Headquarters of Congress but were unable to choose their new floor leader in the Assembly who would become the next chief-minister of the State, replacing BJP’s incumbent chief-minister Shivraj Chauhan. Senior party leader and former Union Minister Kamal Nath and Scindia family scion Jyoditraya Scindia are front-runners for the chief-minister’s post.

The MLAs’ meeding, which lasted a couple of hours, turned out to be inconclusive as Scindia and Nath found equal support among them. The MLAs later passed an emergency resolution authorising party president Rahul Gandhi to choose the next chief-minister of the State.