‘There is no bigger leader in the state and he is among top five at the national level’.
New Delhi: The appointment of Shivraj Singh Chouhan as the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh—although it took place minus any light and sound because of the Covid-19 scare—is being seen as a significant development in the way politics will play out in the Bharatiya Janata Party in the coming 5-10 years.
Party sources speaking to The Sunday Guardian said that with the 61-year-old Chouhan becoming the CM for the fourth time, he has cemented his place among the topmost BJP leaders, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former party president Amit Shah and the present party president, J.P. Nadda.
Bhopal-based sources, while commenting on media reports that suddenly started appearing just days before the BJP legislature meeting on Monday, 23 March, stating that Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar was going to be the Chief Minister, said that Tomar was never “really” in the reckoning for the CM’s chair.
“The choice was overwhelmingly Chouhan, in Bhopal, Nagpur and Delhi. Others like Kailash Vijayvargiya and Tomar were being pushed by some sections of the party, but keeping in mind the fact that BJP has a thin majority in the state Assembly, it was decided to go with Chouhan as he was the most popular among the party MLAs in the state. If Chouhan was not appointed the CM, the chances of problems similar to what Kamal Nath faced during his tenure—that eventually led to the fall of his government— developing in the BJP were strong,” a party strategist said.
According to him, Chouhan has now established himself in a very strong position in the state. “There is no bigger leader than him in the state and he is among the top five at the national level. No one wants to be on the wrong side of Chouhan. He is just 61 years old and has been an MP five times and a CM four times. When time comes, he will automatically move up even further,” a Delhi based party leader said.
A close relative of Chouhan had told The Sunday Guardian on 16 March, amidst the political drama that was happening in the state, that there was no question of anyone but Chouhan becoming the Chief Minister of the state.
“There is a reason he has kept himself far away from any responsibility at the Centre: he knows that he has time on his side and he is among the few rare politicians who understand how important it is to have a strong base in one’s home state. He has moved up the party ladder by hard work, and not through sycophancy. Remember, he first became an MP in 1991 and an MLA a year before that. He has almost 30 years of mainstream political experience. It is not easy to ignore such a bright CV,” he added.
As a convention, it is assumed that the Leader of the Opposition is the party’s CM candidate. However, when the Congress government fell, the name of Gopal Bhargava, Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly, was not even being discussed in the party office as a possible CM face. One reason for that is that he is not a Shivraj Chouhan man. “When Bhargava was appointed as LoP, Chouhan was not too pleased with it, but he did not react and just sat silently. In 2012, when Prabhat Jha, as the state president of the party, started becoming too ‘popular’, Chouhan made sure that he was replaced with a more docile Narendra Singh Tomar. Chouhan takes time and then makes his move without any fanfare,” recalled an RSS functionary, who has worked in Bhopal. Bhargava had resigned as the LoP on 23 March, just hours before the party legislature meeting, which then met and elected Chouhan as the new leader of the legislature party.
An upset Jha, while speaking at Tomar’s takeover ceremony in December 2012, in Bhopal, minced no words in making it clear that he was aware why he was removed suddenly. Jha had publicly stated that the decision to remove him was kept as secret as the Pokhran nuclear test, which was conducted under the leadership of then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
However, Jha and Chouhan later patched up and now share a very cordial relationship. Chouhan, who came from a humble family background, is often criticised for not taking tough calls. According to observers of Vallabh Bhavan, Bhopal, where the CMO is located, Chouhan, in his last term (2013-2018), left everything to a group of four-five bureaucrats who ran the state like a fiefdom and accumulated a massive largess for themselves and their children.
“He lost control of the bureaucracy in his last term. One of Chouhan’s weaknesses is over-relying on top babus and start taking their advice as gospel truth and that was one reason behind many of his schemes not being properly implemented on the ground, as the babus knew that the CM was in ‘their hands’ and they lost fear of any action. If you will study the track record of Chouhan, you will see that he is never harsh with his babus. The most obvious example for that is the stampede at Ratangarh, Datia in 2013. Not one of the bureaucrats was ever punished for the lapses that left 115 people dead. The district level officers reached out to their seniors in the CMO, who then hushed up the matter,” alleged a retired IAS officer.