Tag: 2023 madhya pradesh assembly elections

‘Most Scams Under Shivraj Govt in Schemes for Poor’: Congress Candidate and Whistleblower

Paras Saklecha is the Congress’s candidate for the Ratlam constituency. He tells The Wire that corruption is among the top three issues that would count against the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh.

New Delhi: “Shivraj Sarkar ka matlab hi 50% commission hain.” (The Shivraj Singh Chouhan government is synonymous with 50% commission). Printed in saffron font, this one-line indictment of the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh was part of the preface to a document released by its rival Congress, listing the incumbent’s alleged scams in its 18 years in power. With a copy of this placard in hand, the Congress’s chief minister candidate Kamal Nath in August released an Aarop Patra (chargesheet) of alleged corruption and scams under the Chouhan government. The document was titled “Ghotala hi Ghotala–Ghotala seth, 50% commission rate,” a direct dig at Chouhan, who is described as ‘Lootera Mama’.

Standing alongside Nath at the release was a wavy-haired man with a geeky appearance who has often been at the forefront of the fight against corruption in the state: Paras Saklecha. He played a significant role in drafting the Congress’s ‘chargesheet’ against Chouhan, one that has underlined corruption as a major point of attack in the party’s campaign against the BJP.

A mathematics tutor-cum-politician, Saklecha is a former independent MLA. He joined the Congress in 2018, months before the state voted that year. In the 2023 assembly election, the Congress has fielded him from Ratlam, a constituency in the Malwa region. Saklecha, fondly referred to as dada (elder brother) by students, argues that corruption was among the top three issues that count go against the Chouhan government in the November 17 election.

“They will face heavy losses due to their corruption, which has increased at all levels. There is corruption everywhere in the state, whether you have to get any enrolment done or want an Ayushman Bharat card or BPL coupon made. The administration is unrestrained,” he said.

Talking to The Wire, Saklecha alleged that an overwhelmingly high number of alleged corruption scams in MP had taken place in welfare schemes for the poor.

“They were supposed to bolster the financial condition of the poor. But that did not happen. Instead, the mafia swallowed all the funds,” he said.

The Congress’s Aarop Patra mentions over 225 “scams” under the Chouhan government, including charges of direct financial irregularities along with instances of misgovernance and mismanagement.

At the top of the list is the alleged Poshan Ahar ‘scam’ related to the supplementary nutrition scheme run by the government’s Women and Child Development Department. Citing a report by the Accountant General, the Congress has said that vehicles mentioned as trucks meant to distribute ration under the scheme, were found to be motorcycles, autos and tractors. The Congress also alleged that 11,000 metric tonnes of take-home ration was distributed to beneficiaries only on paper.

Also featured in the Congress chargesheet is the alleged irregularity in the recruitment of contractual nursing staff under the National Health Mission. The recruitment process of the scheme came under the scanner earlier this year after the exam paper was leaked. The exams were held for recruitment on 2,284 posts, for which 45,000 candidates were to appear.

While the embers of the infamous “Vyapam Scam” in Chouhan’s previous terms have gradually died out, fresh allegations in the recruitment process of Patwaris (revenue department staffers) have rocked the government. The matter, labelled the “Patwari Recruitment Scam” by the Congress, came to light after it was found that seven out of the top 10 candidates who had taken the online examination for the recruitment came from the same exam centre in Gwalior, a college run by a BJP MLA. Facing a demand by the Congress for a CBI inquiry, Chouhan in July put a stay on the appointment of the qualified candidates. The Congress chargesheet also includes allegations of irregularities in the state’s mid-day meal scheme, Anganwadi department, distribution of tap water, para medical scholarship, sale of tribal land, illegal mining and the shoddy construction of the Mahakal Lok Corridor in Ujjain, where statues of Saptarishis were damaged due to gusty winds in May.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Photo: Twitter/@ChouhanShivraj

Saklecha says in addition to the long list of corruption charges, the concerning issue of unemployment and the manner in which the BJP overthrew the Congress government through the defection of almost two dozen MLAs in 2020, would play heavily in the minds of the voters.

In 2018, the Congress caused a major upset as it emerged as the largest party in the MP assembly, winning 114 out of 230 seats. Though it fell short of a majority, it formed a government with the support of four independent MLAs, two Bahujan Samaj Party MLAs and one Samajwadi Party MLA. This mandate, read with the huge downward swing in the seat tally of the incumbent BJP from 165 to 109, was an indication that the people voted to overthrow the BJP government after 15 years of its rule, says Saklecha.

“But when the BJP formed the government again through defections, the voters felt cheated. There is huge anger among them regarding this betrayal. That’s why in this election, they will vote against BJP with twice the strength and hurt those who hurt their votes. This is going in favour of the Congress.”

The issue of unemployment linked with the various irregularities in the recruitment process of various jobs has also put the Chouhan government on the back foot from time to time.

While other whistle-blowers gained much of the limelight in highlighting irregularities in the Vyapam Scam in 2014 and 2015, Saklecha was probably the first legislator to raise the subject in the state assembly way back in 2009. He was then an independent MLA.

Over the years, Saklecha has consistently filed RTIs and petitions and dug out key documents regarding the case, which is still being probed by the CBI. In 2015, he even published a 100-page detailed summary of the scam, ‘Vyapamgate,’ details from which were later used by the Congress to level corruption charges against Chouhan.

In 2014, he submitted a 340-page document to the CBI after the agency put out an advertisement asking the public who had complaints regarding the Vyapam recruitment scam to send documents and letters. However, nine years later, the scrutiny of his documents is still on, says Saklecha, who recently approached the Madhya Pradesh high court seeking information about the status of the probe.

Given that Saklecha has a sound footing in finances and a record of raising corruption issues inside and outside the assembly, his candidature from Ratlam has drawn interest. The BJP won the Ratlam seat in 2013 and 2018.

Saklecha started out as a bank clerk, parallelly coaching students preparing for railways and bank exams. A gold medal winner in physics and a brilliant mathematician—his formulas are taught in the Hindi belt—Saklecha is also a poet and writer. In 1999, he was elected as the mayor of Ratlam, a result of his popularity for running free coaching centres for students. In 2003, he contested the assembly election for the first time but lost in a close fight to the BJP’s Himmat Kothari, who would go on to become the state’s home minister. In 2008, Saklecha won his only election. In 2014, he contested the Lok Sabha election as an Aam Aadmi Party candidate from Mandsaur but lost.

Has Shivraj’s Position Become Like Bommai, Under Whom BJP Suffered a Crushing Defeat in Karnataka?

In an unprecedented move, the BJP announced seven MPs, including three union ministers – Narendra Singh Tomar, Prahlad Singh Patel and Faggan Singh Kulaste – and a national general secretary as candidates in the assembly election.

Bhopal: Speculations have been rife in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh for a long time that the coming assembly election could bethe four-time chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s swan song. The increasingly tightening control of the central BJP leadership on poll preparations in the state and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s marked avoidance of mentioning either the name or achievements of the chief minister during his Madhya Pradesh tours further lend credence to the speculation.

The second list of 39 BJP candidates issued by the party on Monday, September 25, will only raise more doubts about Chouhan’s fate after the assembly elections.

In an unprecedented move, the BJP will field seven MPs – including three union ministers, Narendra Singh Tomar, Prahlad Singh Patel and Faggan Singh Kulaste – in the assembly election. Another surprising candidate for the election is BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya.

The top guns are seen as having blown the field wide open for the race to be chief minister should the BJP win, with Tomar, Patel and Vijayvargiya now strong contenders. All three are contemporaries of Chouhan, whose political shenanigans over the past 18 years ensured the gradual weakening of their clout in the state. Now they are back in the reckoning, possibly at the expense of Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

The high-profile names in the second candidates’ list caught the chief minister by surprise, according to sources close to him.

Interestingly, the MPs whose names were announced on Monday were informed in advance about the party’s decision but Chouhan was kept in the dark.

Recently, Tomar, Patel, Kulaste and Vijayvargiya played an active role in organising the BJP’s Jan Ashirwad Yatra, which covered 230 assembly constituencies and over 10,000 km. With the central leadership completely taking over the reins of the Yatra, Chouhan was eclipsed.

Agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar. Photo: PTI

His apparent fall from grace has triggered speculation about whether the longest-serving BJP chief minister will be denied a ticket to contest the assembly poll.

State Congress media cell chief K.K. Mishra said, “While names of party big leaders have been announced, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s name is missing. This proves that Chouhan has weakened and is no longer a heavyweight in the party.”

The BJP’s big gamble on the MPs is being viewed as part of the central leadership’s desperate strategy to “invisibilise” the chief minister from the campaign. The strategy seems to be aimed at downplaying, if not erasing altogether, the name and works of Shivraj Singh Chouhan from public memory in the run-up to the assembly poll.

CM as liability?

In its actions since the campaigning gathered momentum, the central team led by Amit Shah has betrayed the impression that Chouhan’s face is a big liability for the party. None from the central team assigned to supervise the poll campaign in Madhya Pradesh is talking about Chouhan’s time at the helm for nearly two decades.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who addressed an election rally on September 25 in Bhopal to mark the culmination of the Jan Ashirwad Yatra, did not deign to mention the chief minister’s name nor the state government’s performance. All through his speech, he attacked the Congress.

Curiously enough, even the chief minister himself, who is otherwise known to brag about his achievements, is remarkably subdued on this count. Instead, his sole focus is on announcing pre-poll bonanzas to different sections. He seems to be banking on freebies, particularly the ones for women like the flagship Ladli Behna Yojana. He has intriguingly refrained from responding to the Congress’s posers on issues such as mounting debt of the state exchequer, “50% commission ki sarkar “, poor social indices, unemployment and cuts in allocations to health and education.

He instead seems intent on outdoing the Congress’s social welfare promises for youth, women, farmers and government employees. Of the 11 schemes that the Congress Vachan Patra promises to implement if voted to power, the chief minister has sought to offer more lucrative deals in six aspects.

BJP leadership’s counter-strategy

Sure enough, the BJP central leadership seems well aware of the harsh reality that the beleaguered chief minister finds himself in. The opposition’s allegations about “50% commission ki sarkar” had begun to resonate with the state’s voters soon after the Congress routed the BJP’s ‘40% sarkara” in Karnataka in May this year. All the chief minister’s promises on social welfare have provoked angry remarks: “Why did you not bother about us all these years? Why all this now, when the election is round the corner?”

Realising that Madhya Pradesh too might go the Karnataka way if Chouhan is not reined in, Union home minister Amit Shah took command of electioneering.

The strategy unfolded with a subtle hint to the BJP cadres and the electorate alike that Chouhan will not be the party’s chief ministerial candidate. Not only that, Chouhan was denied the opportunity to helm the Jan Ashirwad Yatra, a privilege he enjoyed while canvassing for the previous three assembly elections.

Instead, the central leadership chalked out five such chariot-mounted journeys from different regions. Flagged off by Union ministers Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and Nitish Gadkari between September 2 and 5 from five corners of the state, the yatras culminated on September 25 in Bhopal where Prime Minister Modi addressed the party workers assembled from all over the state. All through the yatra, the chief minister was kept away.

Narendra Modi and Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Bhopal. Photo: @narendramodi/ X (Twitter)

So pitiable appears to be the plight of Chouhan that for issuing a report card on the chief minister’s performance over the last 18 years, Shah rushed down to Bhopal on August 21.

The BJP’s longest-serving chief minister looked on as the Union home minister sang paeans of the state government’s “success” in removing the ‘Bimaru’ (laggard) tag from Madhya Pradesh. However, the “achievements” have found space only in advertisements in electronic, digital and print media that the state government has been liberally releasing.

However, the same achievements adorned with allegedly dubious statistics are missing in the election speeches of the BJP leaders. Instead, the BJP campaigners seem to prefer speaking on the Congress’s “sins’ in aligning with the forces that have “insulted Sanatana Dharma”.

While releasing the state government’s report card, Amit Shah sidestepped questions on whether Chouhan will continue in the post if the BJP is voted to power again. Shah said that the party would decide on the chief minister’s post only after the election.

Chouhan’s position has become akin to Basavaraj Bommai, under whose watch the BJP suffered a crushing defeat in the Karnataka assembly election in May this year. He too was not projected as chief minister. Like in Karnataka, the BJP high command is once again pinning its hope on Modi’s leadership and, accordingly, devising strategies to keep a sharper focus on national issues, apart from religious polarisation.

The central leadership’s mood was also evident from BJP president J.P. Nadda in July appointed Union minister Bhupendra Yadav as the state election in-charge and Ashwini Vaishnaw as the co-in-charge for the assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh. A week later, on July 15, the party appointed Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar as convener of its election management committee.

Tomar, who has been president of the Madhya Pradesh unit of the BJP, is considered a low-profile leader who enjoys cordial relations with various regional satraps. He is a lawmaker from Morena in the Gwalior-Chambal region, where the BJP has been trying to improve its performance.

The active supervision of three Union ministers in various capacities and Shah’s close monitoring of the election preparations has rendered the state leadership’s power strikingly weakened. This became obvious when the party on August 23 released its first list of 39 candidates, for the seats it had lost in the 2018 assembly election.

The names were decided at the BJP’s Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting, chaired by Nadda and attended by Modi as well as Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Shah, among other senior leaders.

The candidate selection was said to be based on a survey conducted by the central leadership. The chief minister, who is not a member of the CEC, had little, if any, say in the selection process.

The release of the first list evoked an angry response in at least a dozen constituencies, triggering protests and accelerating the process of desertion from the BJP that was already underway since May. So far, 45 BJP leaders are believed to have joined the Congress.

Disappointing feedback

Although the central leadership decided not to buckle under the pressure from disgruntled leaders, the wave of protests led the high command to conclude that merely sidelining the chief minister would not mollify the angry cadre.

The feedback from the Jan Ashirwad Yatras, which evoked a lacklustre response, further confirmed their apprehension that anti-incumbency against Chouhan is deeper than they imagined. The leadership, therefore, contemplated a more drastic step.

The decision to field the seven MPs – including the three Union ministers – appears to be the outcome of stock-taking of the election scenario.

An MP from Morena, Narendra Singh Tomar will be contesting the Dimani; Satna MP Ganesh Singh will contest the Satna assembly seat; Faggan Singh Kulaste, the Mandla MP, has been fielded from Niwas; Rakesh Singh (Jabalpur MP) from Jabalpur Paschim; Prahlad Patel (Damoh MP) from Narsingpur; Riti Pathak (Sidhi) from Sidhi; and Uday Pratap Singh (Hoshangabad) from Gadarwara. Vijayvargiya will contest the Indore-one seat.

Kailash Vijayvargiya has been included in the list a decade after he won the Mhow seat in his native Indore district for the second time in 2013. His inclusion has ended any possibility of his son Akash getting a ticket. According to sources, the central leadership is upset with Akash over his 2019 attack on a civic body official in Indore with a cricket bat.

Kailash Vijayvargiya. Photo: PTI

While Kulaste is a six-term MP, Rakesh Singh and Ganesh Singh have won for four terms, Tomar is into his third term, and Riti Pathak into her second.

A senior BJP leader said that the party was hopeful that fielding several experienced leaders on the electoral battlefield will assuage the fatigue factor against Chouhan.

The BJP has been grappling with factionalism in the state, leading to the direct involvement of Amit Shah in the party’s campaign. Vijayvargiya, who could have caused the BJP trouble, is now kept happy, while Prahlad Patel cancels out fellow Lodhi Uma Bharti’s OBC assertions. The Sadhvi is sulking over her neglect in the BJP as she is neither part of any committee nor invited to any party meeting.

Following Monday’s decision, the Congress was quick to call it the BJP’s desperate gambit. “It’s a sign that the BJP has accepted defeat,” PCC chief Kamal Nath wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

Madhya Pradesh: BJP’s Internal Rifts Give Congress the Edge in Perception Game

In the past few months, several BJP leaders, big and small, have quit the party and joined the Congress, some with plenty of fanfare.

New Delhi: “I joined the Congress with the desire to see that the BJP does not come back to power,” says veteran leader and former two-time BJP MLA Girija Shanker Sharma.

Considered among the old-guard leaders of the BJP in Madhya Pradesh, the Sharma family has had a long connection with the party and enjoyed reasonable electoral success over the years.

Girija Shanker’s brother Sitasharan Sharma, a five-time MLA and former speaker of the Madhya Pradesh assembly, is still a BJP legislator. Together, the brothers have won the Hoshangabad (earlier Itarsi) seat seven times. So, when Girija Shanker recently quit the BJP and hopped to the rival Congress along with hundreds of his supporters, the saffron party lost one of its core leaders. It was part of an alarming trend over the past six months for the saffron party in the poll-bound state.

Sharma, who was elected as an MLA in 2003 and 2008, says the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government has “lost its way” in Madhya Pradesh and it was no longer in the best interests of the people to return it to power. “The janata is no longer going to support them,” Sharma told The Wire. “For whatever reason, be it self-interest or ticket, people are joining the Congress. The public cannot ignore that,” he said.

There is an element of truth in his statement. In the past few months, several BJP leaders, big and small, have quit the party and joined the Congress, some with plenty of fanfare.

Some estimates put the number at 40.

These include the sitting BJP MLA from Kolaras in Shivpuri, Virendra Raghuvanshi; former MLA Bhanwar Singh Shekhawat; former MP from Khargone Makhansingh Solanki; and three-time former MLA and former cabinet minister Deepak Joshi. Like Sharma, Joshi also ended a long-running, close-knit relationship with the saffron party. His father Kailash Chandra Joshi was a former chief minister of the state and an important Jan Sangh leader with an illustrious public life. The senior Joshi won the assembly election from Bagri seat eight times, apart from winning two Lok Sabha elections from Bhopal and being elected to the Rajya Sabha once.

While joining the Congress, Deepak Joshi accused the BJP of persecuting party workers who were following his father’s path. He also accused the party of diminishing his father’s legacy.

Deepak Joshi lost the 2018 assembly election from the Hatpipaliya seat in Dewas to the Congress’s Manoj Narayansingh Choudhari. In March 2020, 22 Congress MLAs – led by Jyotiraditya Scindia – defected to the BJP and toppled the Kamal Nath government.

Choudhari was among them.

In the by-poll necessitated by the defections, the BJP fielded Choudhari instead of Joshi. The former won the by-poll, putting a question mark on Joshi’s political future.

MLA Raghuvanshi from the Gwalior-Chambal region blamed the new entrants led by Scindia for his disenchantment with the BJP. While announcing his resignation from the BJP, Raghuvanshi said “original” BJP workers like him were being harassed and that he was not even being allowed to conduct the ground-breaking ceremony or inauguration of development projects sanctioned by him as legislator. He said former Congress MLA Mahendra Yadav was acting like his superior after joining the BJP along with Scindia. In 2018, Raghuvanshi had defeated Yadav.

“I informed the party leadership that it was a good thing to have formed the government [in 2020], but one should not raise the varchasva (domination) of one person [Scindia] to such heights that we find it difficult to carry out development and public service and to remain in politics,” said Raghuvanshi.

Others who have shifted loyalties include former MLA from Datia Radhelal Baghel; Rao Yadvendra Singh Yadav, former zilla panchayat chairman and son of a three-time MLA; Anubha Munjare, wife of former Balaghat MP Kankar Munjare; Malkhan Singh, a dacoit-turned-Narendra Modi campaigner; Ashish Agarwal, former state home minister Umashankar Gupta’s nephew; and Megha Parmar, ace mountaineer and the first woman from MP to climb Mt Everest.

After Parmar’s entry into the Congress, the Chouhan government dropped her as the state ambassador for the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao programme. The list of BJP leaders who have joined the Congress also includes those who were considered to be close to Scindia. The latest among them was Samandar Patel, who led a convoy of 700-800 vehicles from his hometown in Neemuch to Bhopal, where he joined the Congress. In July, another Scindia loyalist who had followed him to the BJP, Baijnath Singh Yadav, former Congress Shivpuri president, returned to the grand old party in the presence of Kamal Nath.

What the defections say

Whether they were disgruntled due to roadblocks in their personal ambitions, insecure over getting a BJP ticket or have personal scores to settle, there is no denying that by quitting the BJP and joining the Congress these leaders have provided the latter with the edge in the perception battle as Madhya Pradesh heads towards an assembly election.

These rebellions have also brought to the fore the internal rifts and churning within the BJP and a new element of factionalism driven by the entry of Scindia and his loyalists.

Though Chouhan has been at the helm of the government for most of the last two decades, the state BJP also has other senior leaders like state president and MP V.D. Sharma, BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, state home minister Narottam Mishra – and more recently, Scindia – who command their own set of loyalists. If political observers are to be relied upon, all of these leaders also harbour greater ambition. The entry of Scindia and his loyalists in particular seems to have caused discontent among a section of BJP old-timers, workers and leaders alike. In public, however, the party puts up a united front.

Girija Shanker Sharma, who was with the BJP till recently, says there is dissatisfaction among these top BJP leaders over securing tickets for their loyalists. “This is not some meaningful discontent over policies or programmes but mutual conflict over tickets,” says Sharma.

Observers say it is not certain that Chouhan would be retained as the CM if the BJP does win. Therefore, the other aspirants are trying to build up their own support bases among probable legislators to stake a claim for the top job.

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Photo: Twitter/@ChouhanShivraj

The Congress has tried to project the defections from the BJP as panic setting in. The influx of leaders from the BJP to the Congress has produced two results, says Paras Saklecha, a former independent MLA who joined the Congress in 2018 and has been at the forefront of the anti-corruption crusade in the state.

First, since the Congress has been able to snatch some core BJP leaders, it has sent a message that the saffron party’s projection of itself as a disciplined organisation no longer holds. The party organisation is not as strong as it used to be or as it projects itself to be, and the fear of a “strict central leader” such as Amit Shah has dissipated, claims Saklecha.

Second, whether these leaders quit the BJP for the sake of election tickets or not, what is visible to the public is that these turncoats see their future secure in the Congress as they believe it has a greater chance of coming to power. “There is an atmosphere building up in favour of the Congress,” Saklecha told The Wire.

Last month, Saklecha was standing next to Kamal Nath when he released an aarop patra (chargesheet) of alleged corruption and scams under the Chouhan government – a document titled “Ghotala hi Ghotala—Ghotala seth, 50% commission rate.”

Referring to Chouhan as “Lootera Mama,” the document included details of alleged irregularities in financial and governance matters worth thousands of crores in over 225 “scams”. This included the infamous Vyapam scam, and irregularities in Poshan Ahar and mid-day meal schemes, Anganwadi department, tap-water, Patwari recruitment, nursing, para-medical scholarship, illegal mining, tribal land and Mahakal Lok scam.

Congress MLA from Dhar Hiralal Alawa says the defection of BJP leaders has strengthened the mood in favour of the Congress in rural areas. “People see leaders leaving the ruling party as a sign of change,” says Alawa, who is from a tribal community. The MLA also claims that there is growing disenchantment among the sizeable tribal communities, which constitute 21% of the population, towards the BJP – especially because of the ethnic conflict in Manipur, the cloud over the Uniform Civil Code and the recent incident in which a Brahmin man linked to the saffron party had urinated upon a man from a tribal community in Sidhi.

Questions about Chouhan’s leadership?

While it is true that timely opportunism during election season and shifting of loyalties are endemic in Indian politics, senior journalist and political analyst Girija Shanker says that there is a noticeable trend this time around. “Leaders shift from one party to another before every election. These are never about policies but about exploring new opportunities. But the difference this time is that it is the Congress and not the BJP that is doing this to build an atmosphere in its favour,” says Shanker.

The political analyst, however, also cautions that barring one sitting MLA and a handful of ex-legislators, none of those who have quit the BJP have a personal mass following or are influential on their own. He also says that given the strong central leadership of the BJP, the infighting and factionalism in MP would not become a big factor in the election and would be likely brought under control. Hidden discontent within the party ranks might prove more detrimental to the BJP, he says.

The continued defections have also raised a question about the leadership of Chouhan, who has never looked as vulnerable as he has in this election season. Saklecha, who had made life difficult for Chouhan’s previous governments by raising the Vyapam scam inside and outside the state assembly, says the CM is showing signs of nervousness.

“This is doubt [from] his body language [that he is under pressure]. He is being over-active. In one of his speeches, while referring to the newly launched Ladli-Behna scheme, he repeatedly asked the crowd if they liked the scheme. He was almost persuading them to say yes. He was not confident that the public was taking it positively,” said Saklecha.

Pankaj Chaturvedi, a Scindia-loyalist who joined the BJP in 2020 and is today a party spokesperson, however, says the defections are but “temporary joy” for the Congress. He downplays the trend of Scindia loyalists returning to the Congress, saying it does not impact the leader’s image or popularity.

Chaturvedi also dismissed the trend of BJP leaders joining the Congress, saying that only those who had realised that they would not get a ticket were leaving. “The public is not bothered,” he says. Asked specifically if Scindia had chief ministerial aspirations and if factionalism in the BJP would hurt its interests, Chaturvedi said that from day one, Scindia had “made it clear that his motive was not to achieve political chair or CM post but to serve the public through a nationalist vision.”

Factionalism was actually rampant in the Congress, Chaturvedi claimed. “The Congress is a divided house,” he says, claiming that senior leaders Digvijaya Singh, Kamal Nath, Ajay Singh, Arun Yadav, Govind Singh and Jitu Patwari all had some quota of seats to be allotted to their loyalists.

Last week, when the same questions were put forward to Scindia by an Aaj Tak anchor at the channel’s election conclave in Bhopal, the leader downplayed the issue.

“I am not a CM candidate and was not one even then [in 2018],” Scindia said. On his loyalists returning to the Congress, he chose to be diplomatic and interpreted it as people’s display of personal aspirations. He even wished them all the best.

“When elections are near, say two or three months left, this avagaman ki neeti (practice of movement of leaders into and away from parties) is common. If one feels they will not get a ticket here but there, then that sets off [a practice of] aya ram, gaya ram,” he said.

Jyotiraditya Scindia. Photo: Twitter/@JM_Scindia

The margins in MP are thin. In 2018, the Congress won more seats than the BJP and managed to form the government after a hung assembly with the help of legislators from the Bahujan Samaj Party, Samajwadi Party and four independent MLAs. This ended the long rule of the BJP and Chouhan in the state. However, in 2020, the BJP toppled the Kamal Nath government after almost two dozen Congress MLAs resigned and shifted to the saffron party.

The Chouhan government not only faces the fatigue of ruling for almost two decades but also has a lot to set right in its house, as the defections show.

Aashish Joshi, director (admission) at the Makhanlal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism and Communication, says that there is no doubt that the Congress has been able to race ahead in the perception game by poaching some old and rooted BJP leaders. However, Chouhan has regained lost turf by announcing and implementing new schemes such as the Ladli Behna programme, says Joshi. This has made it a tight contest as things stand today, he contends.

There are several other factors yet to kick in, such as ticket distribution of the Congress and how it handles possible discontent. Then, there is the Modi factor and his role in the campaigning. The Congress has made it clear that it was contesting the election with Kamal Nath as CM candidate, irrespective of whether he will contest the assembly election or choose the by-poll route like he did in 2018. His route to the CM chair, if his party wins, would be decided by the central leadership.

There is also a question mark on whether Chouhan would be the official CM candidate of the BJP. While these questions will be answered in the coming weeks, the Congress has pushed the BJP onto the backfoot in the perception game. And in elections, perception usually – if not always – dictates results.