By D N Singh
With the footsteps of 2024 polls already audible the Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is n appear a little fatigued and walking to the crease still seems sticky.
What haunts the three time CM of MP, popularly called as ‘Mama’, suffers the central leadership’s unwillingness to project him as the CM face for the coming polls in MP.
What the BJP seem banking on is a collective fight this time clearly implying that the incumbent CM somehow displays trust ridden image this time.
Chouhan is obviously in a dilemma of sort which neither he can gulp in or otherwise. It is like aching spot he can not show or see, say sources in Bhopal.
“Aisa bhaiyya nahin milega. Jab mein chala jaunga, tab bahut yaad aaunga (You won’t get a brother like me. When I go away, you will miss me a lot.) and that speaks a lot about his pain within.
Chouhan is the longest-serving CM of BJP across states in India, 16 years plus and counting. When the BJP toppled the Kamal Nath government in 2020 with Jyotiraditya Scindia’s help, at that time too, there were talks of naming a new CM. However, that did not happen.
Chatters in the political grapevine in MP already indicated that, there has been intense speculation that he would be replaced and the party would contest the upcoming polls under a new leadership, similar to the experiment in Gujarat, Uttarakhand and Tripura.
However, Shivraj, who is fondly called as “Mama”, is a survivor, with the party unable to find his suitable replacement. The fact that he is the only OBC CM of the party made matters tricky for the BJP.
So a collective front made of Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Narendra Singh Tomar, Kailash Vijaywargiya, Narottam Mishra, VD Sharma, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Prahlad Patel etc and fielded 7 MPs, including 3 Cabinet ministers. Early opinion polls predict a tough battle for the BJP in MP.
Many wonder as does Rajendra Mishra, senior journalist in Bhopal that, why is the BJP not declaring Shivraj as the CM face of the party? There are rumours that he could be moved to the Central Cabinet. JP Nadda’s tenure is also up soon after Lok Sabha; he could even be made National Party President.
The spiciest rumor is of course that the Central leadership wishes to weaken Mama else he could emerge as a strong competitor in case of a fractured mandate in 2024, tips Mishra.
It’s very natural for a certain degree of anti-incumbency to creep in against any such long serving government led by any leader.
Even some BJP supporters want BJP to project a new face in MP. ‘Mama’ did try to adopt a new image/reinvent himself in this term, copying Yogi’s bulldozer baba image, but it doesn’t gel with his personality, added Mishra.
Records speak
In state elections in the Modi era (2014-date), BJP has fought 16 elections where it was in power (ignoring states where allies have the CM post), and has lost/failed to form a government in 7 states and won/formed the government in 9 states. Of the 7 states which BJP lost, Congress won 5.
In all these five states, Rajasthan (2018), Madhya Pradesh (2018), Chhattisgarh (2018), Himachal Pradesh (2022) and Karnataka (2023), Congress had not declared a CM face and fought under combined leadership. Now BJP is aping this model in MP where ideally it would have liked to replace the CM but couldn’t.
Monotony?
Fresh voters exercising their franchise in 2023 have seen Shivraj as CM for 93 per cent of their lives. Whatever good or bad in MP is attributed to Shivraj by them. In fact they haven’t seen the “dark days” of Digvijay Singh’s tenure, as BJP alleges. This generation also gets bored easily and wants to try out new things.
