Tag: madhya pradesh assembly elections 2023

MP: With a Change of Guard, Can the Congress Mount a Challenge Against the BJP?

Following the drubbing of the Congress in the assembly elections, the party leadership was quick to show the door to Kamal Nath. While Jitu Patwari (OBC) has been made the party chief, Umang Singhar (tribal) has been appointed as the leader of the opposition.

Bhopal: The unceremonious ouster of Kamal Nath as Madhya Pradesh Congress president last Saturday has considerably lessened the sense of despondency among party workers in the state over the party’s stunning defeat in the recently concluded assembly election.

Seldom, if ever, has the state Congress seen so much unconcealed glee on the faces of so many of its cadres before the departure of its head.

“If only Rahul ji had taken this step before the assembly elections!” was the overwhelming reaction in the Congress. Another common reaction was, “Der aaye, durust aaye (Better late than never).”

Many see the decision as a blessing in disguise, arguing that but for the party’s defeat in the election, the high command might not have deemed it proper to rid the state Congress of the two-man gerontocracy of Kamal Nath (77) and Digvijay Singh (76) given their proximity to the Gandhi family.

The duo held sway over the Congress for more than four decades. Although Digvijay Singh did not hold any post in the state Congress after he became chief minister in 1993, he continued to use his enormous clout to meddle in party affairs and influence his successor Pradesh Congress committee (PCC) presidents all these years.

Kamal Nath’s entry into state politics as PCC chief in 2017 and subsequent stint in the short-lived Congress government as chief minister facilitated Digvijay Singh to acquire more power in the party. Both the veterans tightly controlled the party for six years.

Had it not been for the Congress’s crushing defeat, the Kamal Nath-Digvijay Singh pair would have held on to their commanding position. The defeat sealed their fate.

Also read: Behind Congress Defeat in Madhya Pradesh, a Clear Rejection of Kamal Nath’s Leadership

Clear marching order

Soon after the election results were out, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge summoned Kamal Nath, Digvijay Singh and other state leaders to New Delhi to express his utter disappointment over the party’s show in Madhya Pradesh.

In the meeting, Kharge told Kamal Nath point blank that a majority of Congress workers wanted him to go.

Sensing that his position is utterly untenable, the former chief minister pushed the name of his loyalist MLA Bala Bachchan for the post of leader of the opposition, while seeking to continue as PCC chief till the Lok Sabha elections.

Digvijay Singh pushed the name of Omkar Singh Marker and Ajay Singh for the leader of opposition post and supported Kamal Nath’s request for continuation. Rahul Gandhi summarily rejected their pleas.

Kamal Nath, Digvijay Singh and others release the Congress’s manifesto for Madhya Pradesh on October 17. Photo: X/@OfficeofKNath.

In one go, the Congress high command nominated its picks for three important posts. Jitu Patwari (OBC) will be state Congress president, Umang Singhar (tribal) will be the Leader of the Opposition and Hemant Katare (Brahmin) to be the deputy Leader of the Opposition.

Direct association with Rahul Gandhi

All three leaders, aged below 50, are Rahul Gandhi’s loyalists and owe no allegiance to any stalwarts in the state Congress. Both Patwari (50) and Singhar (49) have experience working under the direct mentorship of the former AICC president. Jitu Patwari was co-convener of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra in its Madhya Pradesh phase. He also shot into the limelight in 2017 when the young Congress leader drove Rahul Gandhi on his motorbike in Mandsaur. Gandhi had gone there to meet the families of the farmers who were killed in the police firing in June 2017.

Since then, Patwari has continued to thrive in state politics, thanks to his link with the MP from Wayanad. In the Kamal Nath government, Patwari was a cabinet minister. After the fall of the government, the rising Congress star was made media chief in the state Congress. In the recently held election, the new PCC chief was co-chairman of the campaign committee. He had also been one of the four working presidents of the MPCC under Kamal Nath. Besides, he is on the panel of Congress’s national spokespersons.

Umang Singhar has a long and direct association with Rahul Gandhi. Both undertook a nationwide tour of tribal areas together. Singhar was picked up to help Rahul Gandhi’s campaign in Amethi in the 2009 Lok Sabha election. Again, it was Rahul Gandhi who recommended Umang’s candidacy for the Gandhwani seat in the Dhar district for assembly election in 2008. Since then Umang won the successive assembly polls on this seat with huge margins.

Curtain on Kamal Nath-Digvijay era

The Congress men and women seem to be happier over the choice of his successor, Jitu Patwari, than the exit of septuagenarian Kamal Nath, who is being held squarely responsible for squandering away a golden opportunity to avenge the fall of his government three years ago. His exit rings the curtain down on the era of the vintage-80s leadership. More importantly, it heralds an era of youth leadership that has earned its stripe without the clutches of dynastic, feudalistic, or money power.

The new Leader of the Opposition

The new LoP Singhar is the nephew of fiery tribal leader late Jamuna Devi who had also been in this post in the BJP government. However, Singhar did not bask in the reflected glory of his more illustrious aunty. He carved his niche in the party by the sheer dint of hard work as a Youth Congress leader in the predominantly tribal district that endeared him to Rahul Gandhi.

A former cabinet minister, Singhar is the most prominent tribal leader in the Congress. Having worked with Rahul Gandhi on tribal issues nationally, he is expected to raise the problems of the 21% Adivasi population in the state assembly with greater force than any of his predecessors did.

His deputy Hemand Katare is the son of former minister and former leader of the opposition late Satyadeo Katare. Katare junior won on the Ater seat in 2017 by election caused due to death of his father. He lost the 2018 election but won again in 2023.

Team Rahul in the making

Before elevating Patwari and Singhar as state chief and LoP, Rahul Gandhi appointed two more young leaders from Madhya Pradesh to national bodies of the Congress ahead of the assembly elections. Kamleshwar Patel (OBC), who lost this election, was nominated as a member of the Congress Working Committee, and Omkar Singh Markam (tribal), who won the election from Dindori, was inducted into the 12-member Congress Parliamentary Board.

Thus, the command of the MP Congress’s youth brigade is completely in the hands of Rahul Gandhi.

Who is Jitu Patwari?

Grandson of a freedom fighter, the newly appointed state Congress president Jitu Patwari has risen in politics from being a Panchyat member in his native village in the Indore district. Belonging to the Khati community (Other Backward Caste), Jitu Patwari has come up the organisational ladder step by step. From Panchayat, he was active in the Youth Congress and rose to become the organisation’s state president. A law graduate from Devi Ahilya University, Indore, Jitu Patwari became an MLA for the first time in 2013. He retained the Rau seat in 2018 but lost in the 2023 election.

Reacting to his appointment, Patwari thanked the Congress high command for giving a big responsibility to a “small worker” like him.

“We faced defeat in the recent assembly elections and I am aware that the Congress faces the challenge of putting up a good performance in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. We will face this challenge based on collective leadership and deliver positive results while taking the Congress’ ideology from door-to-door,” he said.

Fear of false dawn remains  

However, even as the state Congress is gung-ho about the dawn of a new era of youth leadership, the apprehension of this being a false dawn cannot be ruled out. The Congress may have injected youthfulness in the leadership, and the party may also celebrate getting the right caste combination (OBC, tribal and Brahmin), but it remains a herculean task ahead for the young trio to revive the disheartened cadres at the grassroots.

Challenge before the trio

The toughest challenge for the new leadership is to mount a narrative in the Congress which runs ideologically counter to that of the BJP.

Kamal Nath miserably failed to do so. He rather peremptorily presumed that the BJP’s Hindutva can be neutralised by covering the Congress with a similar saffron sheet. He unabashedly mimicked the BJP’s tactics of wooing devout Hindus and ended up amplifying the saffron party’s agenda. As the election results show, the voters opted for the original proponent of Hindutva that is the BJP than the Johnny-come-lately imitator that the Congress tried to become.

Legacy of timid Congress

However, to be fair to Kamal Nath, he had inherited the 15-year-old legacy of a timid and dispirited Congress when he took over as its chief in April 2017.

In its long rule, the BJP, through its persistent propaganda of Hindutva, had managed to instil the fear in the Congress that any talk of secularism would make it look anti-Hindu. The fear pervaded down to the grassroots level, so much so that whenever Digvijay Singh tweeted his views on BJP’s communal politics against Muslims, his own party workers would privately blame the veteran leader for damaging the Congress rather than standing by him.

In the Congress ecosystem, the fear of being branded pro-Muslim seeped so deep that the party’s secularist moorings got lost in the ideological confusion. Sensing objection to his avowedly secularist views, Digvijay Singh too, of late, became rather cagey in bashing the Sangh parivar.

Ideological drift went on

No PCC chief before Kamal Nath addressed this ideological drift in the Congress effectively, be they Subhash Yadav, Suresh Pachouri and Arun Yadav. None of them summoned enough courage to present the Congress as a strong secularist alternative to the BJP. Instead, they succumbed to the lure of saffron politics.

When Kamal Nath took over as MPCC chief one and half years ahead of the assembly election in 2018, his sole objective was to become the next chief minister. An ideology-neutral industrialist that he is, Kamal Nath introduced corporate style of functioning in the Congress. He succeeded to some extent. The Congress organisation sprung into life, its head office became swankier, other offices too buzzed with activity, but the cadres remained unenthusiastic about fighting the BJP on the ideological plane. Kamal Nath, on his part, was focused on a corporate-style fight against the BJP. He had no interest whatsoever in priming the Congress cadres for a durable ideological fight.

The fortuitous victory of the Congress (it fell two seats short of the majority ) in the 2018 assembly election further convinced the PCC president that the BJP can be defeated in a corporate style such as by conducting surveys through deploying modern gadgets. He acted as the CEO of a company and treated other leaders like subordinates who must obey his orders without question.

Unlike Kamal Nath, his successor Jitu Patwari is a quintessential down-to-earth leader. His political journey so far is testimony to his ability to easily connect with grassroots workers. His belonging to the OBC community could be an asset to the Congress, provided he can win over 50% of the state’s population to the Congress side on the debate about a caste-based census.

On the issue of secularism, Patwari has been quite articulate in TV debates. However, mouthing platitudes on ideology in TV debates is one thing, and inspiring the Congress workers to shed the fear of the BJP’s Hindutva is quite another.

Debate: Yogendra Yadav’s Analysis Downplaying BJP Wins in Assembly Polls Is Misleading

Yadav had written that ‘BJP’s victory is not so big, and Congress fall is not so deep’. Such a view is nothing but a false comfort. If the Congress does not honestly address the issues it is facing, putting up a good fight in 2024 will be extremely difficult.

Note: Yogendra Yadav’s response to this piece is appended below.

Yogendra Yadav’s intervention through his article and video on The Wire to control the damage from “the psychological warfare” unleashed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after the assembly election results are well-intentioned but misleading, both on facts and history.

All of his four arguments to substantiate his claim – that the “BJP’s victory is not so big, and Congress fall is not so deep” – suffer from selective facts and subjective interpretation.

Some of the responses to the election results from the progressive camp are as surprising as the results. Some scholars like Pushparaj Deshpande are calling for self-censorship in publicly criticising Congress over its lacunae and acting as social evangelicals among the traditional vote base of the Congress and providing the last mile connectivity that the Congress lacks.

Also read: The Myth of BJP’s Hat-Trick and What the Statistics Really Say

Others like Yadav are ignoring the political and ideological inefficacy of the Congress as an electoral opposition to the BJP. Both these approaches might provide false comfort to the Congress and the secular camp in the short term, however, they help the onward march of the Hindutva juggernaut. This is why Yadav’s reading of the election results demands close scrutiny. Let us dissect them one by one.

Did the Congress gain 9 lakh more votes, or 50 lakh less than the BJP?

In his bid to boost the morale of the Congress and those opposed to Hindutva politics, Yadav observes that the total number of votes that the Congress polled against the BJP in the four states should bring solace. All the votes the Congress procured in the four states, namely Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana, worked out to be 4.9 crore whereas the BJP got only 4.81 crore. Hence the analysis that despite Congress losing three states, its vote share is higher by 9 lakh than the BJP. Thus, the conclusion is that people still prefer Congress though it lost power.

This is a mathematically correct but politically incorrect conclusion. It is for a simple reason that it includes Telangana in its overall vote calculation along with the three Hindi states. In Telangana, the Congress’s fight was primarily against the Bharat Rasthra Samithi (BRS), not the BJP. The inclusion of Telangana in the overall calculation completely glosses over the dismal performance of Congress in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh.

Congress leaders Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, Revanth Reddy, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Rahul Gandhi, among others. Photo: Twitter/@INCIndia

If we exclude Telangana, the number of votes the Congress obtained in the three Hindi states is 3,98,42, 115 while the BJP polled 4,48, 75, 952.

This means the BJP procured 50 lakh votes more than the Congress in these three states. However, if we include Telangana, the picture changes and hence provides false comfort.

Also read: In Telangana, Five Trends Highlight Divides, Gains, Losses and Blows to Expansion Plans

If you compare the same with the 2018 elections, the Congress’s predicament becomes more stark. In the previous election, the BJP obtained 3.41 crore votes from these three states and Congress 3.57 crore votes. Thus compared to 2018, the BJP’s tally rose by 1 crore. The Congress could increase its tally by only 47 lakh.

The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) survey and the earlier Axis survey suggest that most of these new BJP voters happen to be from the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and even Scheduled Tribes (STs). This means the Congress’s social base is eroding, further giving way to the BJP. This is a dangerous portent and would never be acknowledged if one takes comfort in the misleading figure of a 9 lakh vote lead.

Hence, clubbing Telangana with the three heartland states and concluding that the Congress got 9 lakh more votes than the BJP will prevent the former from identifying the steep slide due to its ideological compromise with Hindutva in these states.

Even in Telangana, Yadav seems to be enamoured by the resurgence of the Congress vote share from 28% in the 2018 election to 39.4% in 2023. Though this resurgence is positive for the Congress, it did not deter the double-digit growth rate of the BJP in the state.

This factor should not be missed, because it leads to false comfort that the South has closed its door to the BJP. In Telangana, the BJP procured 6.9% votes and 14.43 lakh votes in the 2018 elections. But in 2023, it doubled to 13.90% with 32.51 lakh votes. It has not only increased its seat share from one to eight but also stood second in more than 18 constituencies where it deployed nefarious tactics of communal polarisation. Thus, the growth rate of the BJP has doubled and its vote share is already a third of the victorious Congress, which is a dangerous portent.

Even in Karnataka, it has a consolidated vote share of 36% in spite of its electoral defeat. One should also not close one’s eyes to the noise it is making in Dravidian Tamil Nadu, and the growing number of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) shakhas in communist Kerala.

Is the vote share of Congress sufficient to stage a comeback?

Another strange logic that Yadav offers is that since the difference in vote share between the BJP and Congress is hardly 2% to 4%, one need not worry much about the loss of power. Since the Congress has reattained a vote share of 40%, it would be easy to stage a comeback.

Again it is a mathematically correct but politically incorrect assessment of Congress’s situation in these three states. All of them are more or less bipolar states, with scarce influence of a third actor. These elections have shown that even the Dalit, Adivasi, and OBC social bases of smaller parties have been encroached upon by the BJP. In such a situation, stagnation of vote share is an indication that it is not only an electoral decline but a political decline.

BJP supporters hold up Modi posters. Photo: X/@narendramodi

The analyses of vote shares of the BJP and Congress in the past five elections in these three states, barring Chhattisgarh in 2018, show that the BJP’s vote share is growing whereas the Congress’s vote share is either stagnating or declining with one or two exceptions.

Thus, in Rajasthan, the BJP has an average of 39.88%, with a high of 45.17% in 2013. Whereas the Congress shows an average of 37.14%, with a high of 40.64% in 2018.

In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP’s average is 42.96%, with a high of 48.45% in 2023. The Congress shows an average of 36.42%, with a high of 41.35% in 2018. In Chhattisgarh, the BJP has an average of 40.10%, with a high of 46.27% in 2023.

Overall in bipolar elections, the Congress tends to lose its social base to the BJP, which is obvious in these elections as well.

Thus, even though theoretically a 40% vote share is enough to stage a comeback, the increasing loss of its social base to the BJP makes it impractical. The reason for this lies in the opportunist, Hindutva, and neoliberal politics of the BJP.

Also read: Three Things BJP’s Definitive Victory in the Assembly Elections Tells Us

Do these results have no impact on 2024?

According to Yadav, in 2003, even though the BJP won in the very same states, it lost the 2004 Lok Sabha, and while it lost these states in 2018, it won the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Hence one cannot extrapolate these results to have a bearing on the Lok Sabha elections. Again it is a logically correct statement, but a historically and politically problematic conclusion.

After the advent of Hindutva and the communal polarisation of society and its intensification during the Modi regime, the RSS-BJP has cultivated an unchallenged Hindutva appeal among the Hindu electorate cutting across caste, community, class, gender, and region.

Credit: RSS website

The RSS-BJP machinery has been creating false anxiety about the growing threat to the nation and Dharma which could only be thwarted by a virat purush like Modi.

Thus, of late, the elections have not become transactional affairs between the voter and the party, but they are becoming ideological, especially between the BJP voters and the party. Thus, whatever may be the results in the state elections, at least from 2013, the people of these three states, and those in the Hindi belt in general, have overwhelmingly elected the BJP both in 2014 and 2019.

These results will definitely have an impact on the neighbouring Hindi states, which together account for 240 Lok Sabha seats.

It is not ‘Modi magic’ but the colossal political failure of the Congress and the opposition in offering themselves as a credible alternative. Hence ridiculing this sad phenomenon as ‘impossible magic’ is neither a serious analysis nor a serious critique.

Will the BJP lose 19 seats in Lok Sabha if the same pattern repeats in 2024?

According to Yadav, if the same pattern of voting is repeated in Lok Sabha elections, the BJP would lose 19 seats and Congress would gain 22 seats. For such a thing to happen, the Congress should ensure that it repeats the same performance in 2024.

Take for example the 2019 elections. Rajasthan has 25 Lok Sabha seats, Congress got more votes and seats in the 2018 assembly elections, but could not win even one seat there. All 25 went to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). In Chhattisgarh, where the Congress got 10% more votes than the BJP in the 2018 assembly elections, it could win only two Lok Sabha seats – the BJP got the remaining nine. In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress won only one and the rest 28 were won by the BJP.

Mere extrapolation of votes provides only mathematical solutions.

The history and politics of these states demand introspection and rupture with the past by the Congress to stage a comeback. But, the Congress party has not shown any inclination or a rupture from its soft Hindutva and neoliberal politics either in its campaign or policies.

In this situation, Congress looks like a party with the same fibre as the BJP but with a different colour. Without a radical transformation of Congress politically, ideologically and organisationally, leave alone defeating the BJP, the survival of the Congress itself would become difficult.

Not warning the party and nation about this possibility would be a disservice to both.

I, as a social activist engaged in anti-fascist battles in Karnataka, have always shared Yadav’s dreams respectfully, though not his shifting political strategies. But this analysis took me by surprise and disbelief.

As Gramsci said, “Pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will” is the need of the hour in these times of gloom.

Shivasundar is an activist and a freelance journalist based in Bangalore. 

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Yogendra Yadav’s response:

I agree with most of the substantive points made by Mr Shivasundar. So there isn’t much of a ‘debate’ between us. If there is a difference in emphasis, it is because he may have missed the whole point of my video (which was translated from Hindi and converted into a write-up).

I was responding to the widespread propaganda that the BJP has drummed up with the help of darbari media: that the hat-trick in the three North Indian states is bound to lead to a hat-trick in the Lok Sabha election, that 2024 is now a closed contest, that the BJP’s victory is inevitable.

All the facts and figures I presented exposed the falsity of this propaganda. My point is that this is not yet a closed contest, that the gap in votes is not impossible to overcome, that if the opposition manages to hold on to the votes that it got even in this defeat this would set the BJP back, that the Lok Sabha election can be different from Vidhan Sabha outcomes. Therefore 2024 is not a done deal yet. I hope Mr Shivasundar doesn’t disagree.

I have nowhere suggested that this is going to be easy, let alone inevitable. Of course, this would require introspection, realignment and hard work on the ground over the next few months. But that is the subject matter of another video.

‘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.

MP: Why Congress’s Three Promises to Tribals Could Be a Game Changer in 47 ST Reserved Seats

Tribal votes are also decisive in nearly 40 general seats. There is a perception among tribals that the BJP government’s attitude towards them has been condescending while Congress’s approach has been that of empowerment.

Bhopal: The Congress is sounding reasonably confident of improving upon its tally of 31 in the 47 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes (STs) it won in the 2018 assembly election out of a total of 230 seats in Madhya Pradesh, as the campaign gathers momentum for the voting slated on November 17.

Besides the reserved ST seats, tribal votes are decisive in nearly 40 general seats as well. This is the reason why both Congress and BJP parties are working hard to woo the tribal community.

In the 2018 assembly elections, Congress was successful in winning 31 tribal seats, while BJP could win only 16 seats. In 2013, BJP had won 31 tribal reserved seats and Congress 15, whereas in 2008 BJP won 29 and Congress 17 ST seats.

In 2003, tribal votes played an important role in BJP’s return to power in Madhya Pradesh. At that time, out of 41 reserved seats in the state, BJP could win 37 and Congress only two seats

Three big poll promises

This time around, the Congress’s confidence stems from the party’s three promises that seek to empower the tribals, who account for 21% of the MP’s population. One, implementation of the Sixth Schedule in the districts having more than 50% tribal population; two, enactment of the PESA (Panchayat, Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, 1996); and three, hike in the rate of tendu patta from existing Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000 per bag.

Madhya Pradesh Congress leaders at the release of the party manifesto on October 17, 2023. Photo: X (Twitter)/@OfficeOfKNath

What has further bolstered the Congress’s confidence is the pervasive anger in the tribal community against the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government for the perceived failure to ensure their security, dignity, and cultural mores.

The three Congress promises, articulated by its national general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in an election rally in Mandla on October 12 amid cheers of a large gathering in the predominantly tribal district, have the potential to transform the lot of the community.

The promised hike in the rate of Tendu leaf plucking is expected to benefit at least 45 lakh people in the tribal regions.

The Sixth Schedule vests the tribal region with substantial legal powers to protect their land and culture. It is in force in the northeast states such as Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, and Assam.

There are six districts in Madhya Pradesh with above 50% tribal population including Barwani, Alirajpur, Jhabua, Dhar, Dindori, and Mandla.

After the implementation of the Sixth Schedule, the tribal community will have the right to make and implement their own laws, not only on water, forests, and land but also on marriage and inheritance according to their customs. Also, the community will have the power to decide who will have mining and sand leases.

The PESA act will empower the tribal regions to hold their own village conference (Gram Sabhas) and make administrative decisions.

Although chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had announced the implementation of the Act in November last year on the occasion of the birth anniversary of tribal leader Birsa Munda, it did not come on the ground.

Also read: In MP, Tribal Villagers Pay a Heavy Price for Demanding Forest Rights, Protesting Tree Felling

This law empowers Gram Sabhas to administer the areas covered under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, under which the rights of local tribes over water, forests, and land, and the protection of culture are ensured.

Tribal demography in MP

There are 46 recognised Scheduled Tribes across the state’s 52 districts. Of these, six major tribal groups – Bhil, Gond, Kol, Kurku, Sahariya, and Baiga – account for more than 90% of the 1.53 crore tribal population.

Out of the 52 districts in MP, six are predominantly inhabited by tribals, and 15 have a significant tribal population. The Bhil community constitutes the largest share, comprising about 40% of the ST population in the state, followed by the Gonds at 34%.

The Shivraj government also implemented the Fifth Schedule in 89 tribal-dominated blocks of the state. These are the same areas that have been the stronghold of Congress.

Now, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi has promised to go one step further and implement the Sixth Schedule.

Also read: MP: Despite Their Electoral Clout, Atrocities Against Tribal Communities Are on the Rise

Cautious timing of the announcement

Significantly, the Congress patiently waited till the Model Code of Conduct kicked in to get its star campaigner Priyanka Gandhi to announce the three promises in Mandla, lest the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government might steal them and immediately implement the same.

Before the election schedule was notified, the chief minister had managed to appropriate six out of 11 pre-poll promises to the farmers and women made by Congress because the state government was vested with the power to do so. Now, at best, the BJP can incorporate similar or more lucrative promises to the tribals in its manifesto, and in doing so, expose itself to the allegation of being a copycat.

Tribal-centric campaign

The electoral significance of the place where Priyanka made the potential “game changer” promises is not lost on anyone. Mandla in Mahakoshal region is one of the predominantly tribal districts.

Priyanka Gandhi has so far held four public meetings in Madhya Pradesh, out of which three have been held in tribal-dominated areas. She started her election campaign in the state from Jabalpur in Mahakaushal, which is considered to be tribal-dominated. Then, she addressed rallies in Dhar district in Malwa and Mandla in the Mahakosal region.

In all the rallies she emphasised that the thinking of Congress has been to increase the respect, culture, and traditions of the tribals and that was why the Forest Rights Act was enacted.

Difference in BJP and Congress approaches

While the Congress is unsparing in its efforts to further broad-base its sway on the tribal belts, the BJP, too, is fiercely competing with its rival to regain the lost trust of the community in it.

However, a fundamental difference between the two parties in their approach towards tribals is discernible. The BJP appears condescending towards the community whereas the Congress is focused on their empowerment. The BJP tends to see and call the tribals “Vanvasi” (forest dwellers), the Congress acknowledges them as Adivasi (original inhabitants). The difference in nomenclature is just not semantic quibbling.

At a rally in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh’s Shahdol district on October 11, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s use of the term ‘Vanvasi’ to refer to the tribal community and claimed he forced the PM to use the word Adivasi.

“There is a difference between the words Adivasi and Vanvasi. Adivasi means those who came to Hindustan first and who are owners of this land while Vanvasis are those living in the forest,” Rahul said at the rally.

“Now, listen to Narendra Modi Ji’s speech – he no longer says Vanvasi, he says Adivasi. Adivasi is the word that comes out of the mouth, but Vanvasi is in the heart,” he added.

‘Vanvasi’, which means forest dwellers, is a term used by the BJP’s ideological parent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which works extensively in tribal areas, and claims “to protect them from the clutches of Christian missionaries”.

Tribal leadership crisis in BJP

Another glaring difference between the two parties vis-a-vis the tribals is visible in leadership. The Congress has appointed former Union minister Kantilal Bhuria as the head of its state election campaign committee. The 73-year-old Congress leader belongs to the Bhil tribe, the largest tribe in Madhya Pradesh.

He was a minister in the Manmohan Singh government at the Centre from 2004-2011. In contrast, the BJP has relegated its only important tribal leader and Union minister Faggan Singh Kulaste to fight in the Niwas seat in the Mandla district where the Congress had won by a margin of over 28,000 votes.

The Congress has many prominent tribal faces in the second line of leadership such as Umang Singhar and Bala Bachchan. The BJP sorely lacks a second line of tribal leaders.

Tribal welfare or event management

Owing to the glaring absence of powerful tribal voices within the BJP that would alert the state government to the real concerns of the community, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan virtually reduced the tribal welfare to event management.

Instead of empowering the tribals in the true sense with the provisions of the PESA and the Fifth Schedule, the chief minister has held extravagant tribal congregations across the state where he entertained the government-sponsored crowds with the announcements of emotion-filled tokenism such as naming a railway station after one tribal hero here and setting up a museum in the name of another tribal hero there.

Allowing tribals to brew their own Mahua and selling the product from government outlets as an exotic brand name has been widely publicised as the Shivraj government’s great achievement. Distribution of free ration in the 89 tribal blocks has been passed off as another big feat of the government.

Tribal outreach began in 2021  

The event management series to woo the tribals was launched in a big way in September 2021in Jabalpur with Union home minister Amit Shah participating in a function to mark the martyrdom of tribal king Shankar Shah and his son Raghunath Shah. The tribal royals were blown off with their bodies tied to a cannon by the British for their involvement in the 1857 mutiny.

The Jabalpur conclave was followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi rechristening Bhopal’s Habibganj railway station after the name of Gond queen Rani Kamalapati on November 15, 2021 in Bhopal.  

Since then, a slew of tribal gatherings followed in various tribal regions across the state which witnessed chief minister Chouhan announcing a plethora of welfare schemes for the community.

Why are tribals aggrieved?  

However, these announcements have been more in the nature of tokenism and have failed to address the real worries of the tribals. They expected the government to ensure their security with dignity, without them having to jettison their culture and deities. The government has let them down on these counts.

Far from seeing the government as their saviour, the tribal community in the state has come to regard it as a collaborator of the upper caste exploiters.

The April 2023 protest by Burhanpur’s tribal villagers. Photo: By arrangement.

In the last 20 years, numerous cases have come to light where powerful people, aligned with the ruling party, forcibly grabbed tribals’ land. In one such case, veteran Congress leader Digvijay Singh accused the state BJP president V.D. Sharma of protecting a land-grabber in the Panna district.

Anger erupts

Tribals have in most cases endured atrocities against them with helplessness but there have been occasions when their pent-up anger erupted, causing embarrassment to the government. The latest in a series of the cases of brutality against tribals came to the fore in July this year when a video went viral showing a BJP worker urinating on a tribal. This incident caused a major furore in the community.

As the viral video outraged the nation, the chief minister called the victim of the despicable crime to his bungalow in Bhopal and dramatically washed his feet. From publicly apologising to the poor tribal and granting him financial aid, to razing the house of accused Pravesh Shukla and charging him under the National Security Act (NSA), chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan acted swiftly to contain the potential damage from the incident.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan washes the feet of Dashmat Rawat, the urination case victim, at CM House, in Bhopal. Photo: X (Twitter)/@ChouhanShivraj.

Pravesh Shukla was a representative of the BJP MLA from Siddhi, Kedarnath Shukla. The MLA has been denied a ticket by the BJP. He has announced to contest as an independent against the BJP’s candidate and Member of Parliament Riti Pathak.

But this move is unlikely to prompt the tribals to forgive and forget the BJP for the indignity one of their men underwent. For, atrocities against India’s tribal people are not new, especially in Madhya Pradesh.

Also read: Watch | MP Man Seen Urinating on Tribal Youth Arrested, Allegations of BJP Links

Cases of brutalities

On July 2, 2022, the internet was flooded with visuals of the public immolation of a tribal woman, Rampyari Bai, in Madhya Pradesh’s Guna district. Her family lives in Dhanoria village and belong to the Sahariya tribe.

A year earlier, in an incident in Dewas district, one Surendra Chauhan, with the help of his aides, killed five members of an Adivasi family over his relationship with an Adivasi woman that went wrong and buried their bodies in an eight-feet-deep pit. The bodies were found only after 45 days.

In August 2021, Kanhaiya Lal Bheel was beaten, tied up, and then dragged by a truck on a tarred road. He later died in the hospital. He was treated worse than an animal, on suspicion of theft in Neemuch district.

In May 2021, Sampatlal Batti and Dhansay Inwati, both tribal people, were beaten to death by alleged Bajrang Dal members on the mere suspicion of cow slaughter in Seoni district.

Horrifying statistics of crimes

While Madhya Pradesh is home to 13.6% of India’s tribal population, 23.5% of crimes against tribal people in India take place in MP. Almost 25% of all crimes against tribal people in India take place in the state.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau report Crime in India 2021, Madhya Pradesh reported 2,627 cases filed under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in 2021. The number increased from 2,401 in 2020 and 1,922 in 2019.

The NCRB also reported that in the year 2021 itself, 52 cases of murder were reported in which the victims were Adivasi persons.

In the category of assault on tribal women with the intent to outrage their modesty, 308 cases were reported in 2021.

The NCRB also reported 376 cases of rape against Adivasi women in the state in 2021.

These numbers, however, don’t capture the pervasive violence the Adivasis, especially the ones who live inside or near forest areas, have to face at the hands of state agents such as forest officials.

Unresponsive BJP to their woes

Against this dismal backdrop of the tribals’ plight, the Congress and the BJP are fiercely competing to garner their votes.

On October 5, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in tribal-dominated Jabalpur where he laid the foundation stone of Gond warrior queen Rani Durgavati’s memorial.

On the same day, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was in another ST-dominated district, Dhar, where she unveiled the statue of tribal hero Tantya Mama, a Bhil revolutionary who fought the British.

The Prime Minister in his remarks at the election rally attacked the Congress but did not say a word about the condition of tribals in Madhya Pradesh, much less the state government’s steps for them.

Earlier, in September, Union home minister Amit Shah flagged off BJP’s third Jan Ashirwad Yatra in the predominantly tribal Mandla district, saying that while Congress was focused on minority appeasement, PM Narendra Modi was working for tribals, Dalits, and the poor.

He dwelt at length on the Modi government’s decisions in favour of the tribals but did not mention the state government’s performance towards the tribals. He only reminded that the BJP-led Centre has set up museums on Birsa Munda, Shankar Shah, Raghunath Shah, Rani Durgavati, and other tribal freedom fighters in various parts of the country.

Shivraj’s government achievements are conspicuously absent in the top BJP leaders’ speeches.

“These days (PM) Modi feels shy of even taking Shivraj’s name. He has started saying vote for me. Shivraj is not going to become your CM,” Priyanka Gandhi remarked in the Dhar election rally.

In July 2023, Amit Shah started a tribal outreach campaign from Balaghat to attract tribal votes.

BSP-GGP alliance

Amid competition between the two main rivals, an alliance between the predominantly Dalit party BSP and tribal-centric GGP has given an interesting twist to the electoral politics around tribals.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Gondwana Gantantra Party (GGP) have formed an alliance for the first time ever to contest the polls in a state, which has traditionally been dominated by two parties, the BJP and the Congress.

As per their seat-sharing arrangement for the elections to the 230-member MP Assembly, the BSP will contest 178 constituencies while the GGP will field its candidates in 52 seats.

Formed in 1991, the GGP is concentrated in the Gondi people, a major tribal group in MP, championing the demand for a separate state of Gondwana in the region. The GGP’s traditional vote base is located in the Mahakaushal region, mainly in the districts of Balaghat, Mandla, Dindori, Seoni, Chhindwara, and Betul, which have a notable Gondi population.

Dalits make up about 16% of MP’s population, with 35 of the state’s total 230 Assembly seats reserved for the SCs. In the 2018 assembly elections, the BJP won 18 of these seats, with 17 going to the Congress.

The GGP had fielded 61 candidates in the 2003 state polls, of whom three were elected. However, it has since failed to win any seat in the assembly elections as the party has been beset by factionalism and infighting. It had formed an alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) in the 2018 polls, in which the SP managed to win one seat.

The GGP-BSP alliance is unlikely to significantly impact the voting outcome, according to opinion polls that have predicted a direct fight between the Congress and the BJP with other parties hardly reaching double digits.

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.