Former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Kamal Nath is not going to quit the Congress, state’s party chief Jitu Patwari said on Sunday, PTI reported.

“The BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] misuses the media and questions the integrity of a person and this has come to light,” PTI quoted Patwari as saying. “I had a talk with Kamal Nath ji who told me that the reports floating in the media were part of a conspiracy. He told me that he was a Congressman and will remain in the Congress.”

Patwari said that Kamal Nath’s relationship with the Gandhi family was “unshakable” and that the former chief minister told him that he has lived the “ideology of Congress and will remain with it till the end”.

On Saturday, the former chief minister, his son Nakul Nath and half a dozen Congress MLAs from the state had reached Delhi amid speculation that they were likely to join the BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

Nakul Nath is the MP from the Chhindwara Lok Sabha constituency, the only seat the BJP failed to win in Madhya Pradesh in the 2019 general elections.

Congress leader Sajjan Singh Verma met Kamal Nath in Delhi, where he said that the two leaders had discussed distribution of election tickets in Madhya Pradesh. He also rejected the speculation that Kamal Nath had plans to leave the Congress.

“I had a discussion with him [Kamal Nath],” Verma, who is known to be close to Kamal Nath, said. “He was sitting with a chart on how Lok Sabha tickets will be distributed and what will be the caste equations. He said, ‘My focus is to figure out what the caste equations will be on 29 Lok Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh’. He said that he has not thought about anything like that [about leaving the party] and neither has he spoken on it with anyone.”

Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said that he and the party leadership were in touch with Kamal Nath and they hoped that his colleague would not quit the party.

Singh said that the senior party leader was under pressure from central agencies, including the Enforcement Directorate, the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Income Tax Department, The Hindu reported on Sunday.