“Main bhi kahan jaa raha hoon, main bhi nahi chhodunga (I am not going either, I will also not leave),” outgoing Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on Tuesday, consoling two women who wailed and told him that they would not allow their “dear brother” to leave.

The scene, a video of which went viral on social media platforms, played itself out at the official residence of the chief minister in Bhopal on Tuesday morning, which Chouhan will have to vacate as the leadership has replaced the four-term chief minister with the low profile Mohan Yadav.

“You are dear to every sister.... Brother, we voted for you, we will not let you go from here,” one of the women, weeping inconsolably, was heard saying, holding Chouhan, who earned the image of a dear “brother” and “mama” (uncle) in the state.

In BJP circles, the video, followed by a media address by the outgoing chief minister, was seen as a message from Chouhan to the party leadership that as a loyal soldier he had stepped down from the top post but can’t be pushed to the margins like his mentor L.K. Advani. This came amid taunts from the Opposition Congress that the Atal-Advani era leader will now be packed to the party’s Margdarshak Mandal, a dormant body of party veterans.

Chouhan is not just another leader from the Atal-Advani era, many of whom have been quietly edged out by the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo under the argument of a “generational shift”. In the run-up to the 2014 general elections, Chouhan had been a competitor to Modi for the party’s prime ministerial face. Advani, who had started to lose his grip on the party, had found him a much better achiever than Modi, just a year ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls that led to the dawn of the Modi-Shah era.

“Gujarat was a healthy state. But here Shivrajji has achieved a complete turnaround, transforming a ‘Bimaru’ state into a healthy state that is counted internationally,” Advani had said in June 2013, addressing a party conclave in Bhopal. Advani even went on to compare Chouhan with Atal Bihari Vajpayee, saying that he too was “untouched by arrogance”.

Early that year, Advani had pushed for Chouhan’s induction into the party’s top decision-making body, the parliamentary board. Modi was inducted but Chouhan was kept out. Chouhan was inducted into the parliamentary board during the Modi years but was dropped last year along with Union minister Nitin Gadkari, seen as a Modi baiter.

Addressing the media before he vacates the chief minister’s residence, Chouhan on Tuesday drew attention to what his mentor Advani had hailed him for. He stressed that when he took over Madhya Pradesh in 2005, the state was known as “Bimaru”, a term used to identify a bunch of laggard or sick states. Chouhan asserted that under him, Madhya Pradesh stood completely transformed as a rapidly growing state. He even sought to take his share of the credit for the BJP’s big poll victory, pointing out that the Ladli Behana scheme, which gives cash doles to married poor women, had played a big role.

Asked if injustice had been done to him, Chouhan chose to play the loyal party soldier. “Injustice? BJP gave me everything, kept an ordinary worker like me as chief minister for 18 years…. Now is the time to give back to the party,” he said, stressing that he would do whatever the party asked him to do.

A little later, the leader known for his humility in public, sought to obliquely underline that he would not bow before the current party dispensation to earn a post.

“I would like to say one thing with great humility — that I would rather die than go and ask for something for myself,” Chouhan said. It was in response to his recent statement that he was not going to Delhi like other leaders to lobby for the chief minister’s post. “That’s not my job. That’s why I had said that I will not go to Delhi,” he added.

There are murmurs that the top leadership could take the 64-year-old Chouhan, still young by Indian political standards, out of the state to serve under Modi, his former competitor, as a minister. Sources close to the outgoing chief minister, however, indicated that Chouhan was firm that he can’t be shifted out of Madhya Pradesh.