The Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo on Monday struck out veteran Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the last remaining BJP leader from the Atal-Advani era, and foisted a low-profile Mohan Yadav as chief minister-designate of Madhya Pradesh, tightening their grip over the party.
The sidelining of Chouhan was also seen as a signal to Vasundhara Raje Scindia, another pre-Modi era chief minister, in Rajasthan to get ready to bow out.
The meeting to pick a new chief minister in Rajasthan is scheduled for Tuesday.
In what could rub salt in his wound, Chouhan was made to propose the name of Yadav, the Ujjain South MLA, as his replacement at the meeting of the newly elected MLAs in Bhopal and later hail his choice.
Not only has the four-term chief minister been shown the door but along with him a bunch of politically dominant leaders, some of whom had been made to quit as ministers in the Modi government and sent to the state, have also been left looking as dispensable faces.
The bunch included Narendra Singh Tomar, who till recently was a senior minister in the Modi government. Tomar, whose supporters had projected him as the next chief minister when he was dispatched to contest the state polls, has been offered the Assembly Speaker’s job, considered a retirement post. Along with him, former junior minister Prahlad Singh Patel and party general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya have been left hoping that they get a decent portfolio in the new government.
The foisting of Yadav, one of the 165 BJP MLAs, as chief minister is being seen in BJP circles as the first experiment of its kind by the Modi-Shah duo outside their home turf of Gujarat. What Modi-Shah did in Gujarat nearly a year ahead of the polls by installing the low-profile Bhupendra Patel as chief minister has been applied to Madhya Pradesh after the polls.
BJP leaders said the nature of the party’s runaway victory in three heartland states, projected as a victory of “Modi’s guarantee”, could be used to ram through more decisions like this.
The choice of Yadav, a three-term MLA from Ujjain South, a prominent Hindu pilgrimage town, is being projected as not only a generational change. Yadav is being projected as an OBC face to counter the BJP’s rivals — the Samajwadi Party and the RJD — in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar that are trying to infuse a fresh dose of Mandal politics by pressing for a caste census.
“Mohan Yadav will be the first prominent Yadav face to be made a chief minister by the BJP. It will go out as a signal to the Yadavs in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar that the BJP is not against the community as is projected by Akhilesh and Tejashwi,” a BJP leader said.
In Babulal Gaur, however, the BJP had a Yadav as chief minister as a stop-gap in 2004-05.
The surprise choice was also used to project that in Modi-Shah’s BJP, even low-profile “grass-root” leaders can aspire to get the top post. Party managers said that by choosing a relatively low-profile leader, the top leadership is also looking to demolish the “caucus” of powerful leaders in the state and gain direct control over state politics.
Yadav, who served as a minister in the Chouhan government, is said to have deep links with the RSS, which has a strong network in the state. He owes his political foray to the student wing of the RSS, the ABVP, and is a known Hindutva face in Ujjain.
As in Chhattisgarh, the BJP leadership has also appointed two deputy chief ministers in Madhya Pradesh — Rajendra Shukla (upper caste) and Jagdish Deora (Scheduled Caste). They are equally low-profile like Yadav, though they have served as ministers in the Chouhan government and been elected more than once as MLAs.
Asked what the future holds for Chouhan, who is 64 and still a long way from the unofficial retirement age of 75 in the BJP, party insiders indicated that he could be asked to serve as a senior Union minister and possibly given the agriculture portfolio that Tomar held.
