News Analysis India

Tag: Madhya Pradesh BJP

  • Cadre first, leaders’ kin later: Nadda underlines BJP’s ticket mantra in Madhya Pradesh

    By Express News Service

    BHOPAL: Karyakarta (party workers) come before politicians’ children,’ will be the mantra of the ruling BJP for the upcoming elections in Madhya Pradesh. On the first day of his two-day tour of the state, BJP national president JP Nadda reiterated that it will be the dedicated workers who will represent the party in all the coming polls, while the kin of leaders will work for strengthening the organisation. 

    “It happened in UP where the family members of many sitting lawmakers were competent, but could not be promoted at the cost of the dedicated workers. Similarly, the kin of many lawmakers and ministers in MP too may be competent, but they need to first work for strengthening the party, for which they would be acclaimed. But it would only be the time-tested workers who will represent the party in polls, starting with the local bodies elections,” Nadda told the media.

    Pointing out that the BJP may have lost its winnable seat in Himachal Pradesh and some by-polls in MP due to this policy of avoiding  dynastic politics, he added, “The policy of workers first in polls will be followed religiously. We know this would cause pains, but we also know how to apply healing touch to wounds. How can you expect a worker to work selflessly for the party, if it is run by some families?” 

    Asked about the continuing of the leadership of Shivraj Singh Chouhan  for the 2023 Assembly polls, he replied, “We don’t believe in uprooting a well-planted sapling to see whether it’s firmly rooted or not. The party and government are doing a good job. The parliamentary board will decide about the 2023 polls.”

  • Big win for Shivraj Singh Chouhan as BJP trounces Congress 3-1 in Madhya Pradesh bypolls

    By Express News Service

    BHOPAL: In what was seen as Shivraj Vs Kamal Nath battle, the Madhya Pradesh chief minister has outsmarted the Leader of Opposition.

    The CM, who is undoubtedly BJP’s most popular face in the state after the Prime Minister Narendra Modi campaigned to the full against Nath, who not only joined the campaign trail late, but also largely remained confined to addressing lesser rallies than Chouhan.

    While Chouhan addressed 39 rallies between September 29 and October 27 (maximum 8 in Prithvipur assembly seat and minimum five in Jobat-ST assembly seat, besides 17 rallies in eight assembly segments of Khandwa Lok Sabha constituency), Kamal Nath addressed merely 13 rallies between October 12 and October 17. 

    Not only did 74-year-old Kamal Nath hit the campaign trail nearly two weeks after 62-year-old Chouhan did, but also addressed 26 fewer meetings than the present CM.

    And that wasn’t all. As Kamal Nath just stood confined to addressing a few rallies, Chouhan followed the rallies with night halts at the houses of BJP workers at five places in the by-poll bound assembly and parliamentary constituencies.

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    “These polls have once again established that the CM is the most charismatic BJP leader in the state. His night halt in Jobat-ST seat, which has since decades been a Congress citadel, played a seminal role in boosting BJP’s chances. The night halt was followed by early morning chaupal with tribals, which not only boosted BJP prospects among tribals but also compelled the BJP workers to shelve their anger over the fielding of imported candidate (ex-Congress MLA Sulochana Rawat) instead of a core BJP candidate and work unitedly for the party’s success. On the other hand, Nath remained more in the air and less on the ground, sticking largely to the virtual world of Twitter,” said Chandrabhan Singh Bhadauria, a senior journalist, who extensively covered the Jobat-ST by-poll.

    Even in the Raigaon-SC seat of Satna district (a BJP citadel) which was the lone seat won by the Congress, the CM had started working on ground zero, even before the by-polls were announced. “It was largely due to faulty candidate selection which led to internal differences within the local party organisation and the absence of a BSP candidate that helped the Congress candidate win the by-election. There was no decline in the CM’s popularity anywhere in the constituency. Had the CM not toured the constituency proactively, the BJP candidate would have lost by much bigger than the present 12,000-plus votes margin,” Satna district-based political commentator Vishnukant Tripathi said.

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    Not only was ex-CM Kamal Nath outclassed by Shivraj Singh Chouhan, but another Congress stalwart and ex-CM Digvijaya Singh too suffered major jolt due to the loss in Khandwa Lok Sabha and Jobat-ST seat, where electioneering was largely supervised by him. Particularly in the Khandwa Lok Sabha seat, the former MLA Raj Narayan Singh Purni was given the Congress ticket due to proximity to Singh only.

    The 3-1 by-poll win not only ended up becoming a shot in the arm for Chouhan (ending speculations about his replacement as CM), but also once again brought to the fore organisational capabilities and poll winning strategies of young state BJP president VD Sharma. “Though he came under heavy criticism over outsiders Sulochana Rawat (who won from Jobat-ST) and Shishupal Yadav (who won from Prithvipur) being fielded as BJP candidates instead of core BJP leaders, but his micro-level planning ensured the party’s triumph on three of the four seats,” said political journalist Chandrabhan Singh Bhaduaria.

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    The loss of three out of four seats (two of which were won by Congress in 2018 polls) also once exposed the hollowness of the tall claims of the Congress party of being united in the by-polls. In Khandwa, fielding Raj Narayan Singh Purni instead of ex-MP and former union minister Arun Yadav, was seen to have largely prompted first-time Congress MLA Sachin Birla to switch to BJP just six days before the by-poll. Importantly, it was Birla’s Barwaha assembly segment (one of the eight seats making the Khandwa LS seat) from where the BJP led by maximum margin.

    In Jobat assembly seat, the Congress being a divided house became official, after the loser Congress candidate Mahesh Patel blamed some senior Congress leaders for the defeat. “Some Congress leaders have contributed to the party’s defeat, I’ll submit a report about it to state party chief Kamal Nath,” Patel said.        

    Results:

    Khandwa Lok Sabha seat: BJP’s Gyaneshwar Patil defeated Congress’s Raj Narayan Singh Purni by 82,140 votes (2019 LS polls: Congress won by 2.73 lakh plus votes)
    Jobat-ST assembly seat: BJP’s Sulochana Rawat defeated Congress’s Mahesh Patel by 6,104 votes. (2018 polls: Congress won by 2,056 votes)
    Prithvipur assembly seat: BJP’s Shishupal Yadav defeated Congress’s Nitendra Singh Rathore by 15,687 votes. (2018 polls: Congress defeated SP by 7620 votes)
    Raigaon-SC assembly seat: Congress’s Kalpana Verma defeated BJP’s Pratima Bagri by 12,290 votes (2018 polls: Cong won by 17,421 votes)

  • ‘Will improve my language’: Madhya Pradesh BJP leader Uma Bharti after ‘slippers’ remark

    By PTI

    BHOPAL: After her controversial remarks that government officials are there only to “pick up our (leaders’) slippers”, senior BJP leader Uma Bharti has written a letter to Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh, saying she will improve her language and also urged him to do so.

    As a video containing Bharti’s critical comments against bureaucracy surfaced on social media on Monday, Singh had criticised her for telling him to speak less, while she herself used “highly objectionable” words against bureaucrats. He had also sought an apology from her over her comments.

    On Tuesday, Bharti in a brief letter to Singh said, “I am deeply hurt by my own words. I used to tell you (Singh) repeatedly that you don’t use moderate language. I will improve my language from now on, if you can do the same, then do it.”

    She also quoted a ‘chaupai’ (verse) from the epic ‘Ramayana’ in her letter to the Congress leader.

    After a video containing Bharti’s critical comments against bureaucracy surfaced on social media, the former Union minister had on Monday expressed regret over her intemperate language used during an interaction with a delegation of representatives from other backward classes (OBCs) at her home in Bhopal.

  • Female BJP worker alleges sexual harassment inside library of party office in Bhopal, probe ordered

    By Express News Service
    BHOPAL: A video showing a young female BJP worker alleging sexual harassment inside the Nanaji Deshmukh Library in the state party office in Bhopal has left the ruling party in Madhya Pradesh embarrassed. In the video, which has gone viral over social media, the young girl is seen narrating what allegedly happened to her recently at the library.

    “I hail from a small town and have come to Bhopal out of commitment to the country and the BJP organisation and daily spend 18 out of 24 hours to deeply understand the party. As part of it, I spend considerable time at the Nanaji Deshmukh Library at the BJP office in Bhopal reading books on our party’s ideology,” the young female BJP worker is seen saying in the video.

    “But since last few months, I’ve been regularly facing harassment, which is condemnable. On March 12, an elderly man in the library molested me and even asked me many times to come to his house. He has also been repeatedly asking me to drop him home on my mobike,” the girl alleged in the video.

    But it’s not the young female BJP worker alone who has alleged harassment by the elderly man at the library at the state party HQ, as her friend also alleged that the same elderly man has been troubling her over phone regularly, owing to which she was forced to block his phone number.

    “Instead of helping us, the library in-charge threw my bag (which contained cell-phone and some other important things) out of the library on Tuesday and isn’t allowing me at the library anymore.”

    The female BJP worker has appealed to the national and state BJP leaders, including CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan to get the video footage of March 12 and March 15 of BJP office checked, which will reveal what happened with her.

    The young party worker has also alleged that a male party worker had been recently stalking her.

    The opposition Congress’s state spokesperson Narendra Saluja demanded that the police immediately record the statements of two girls seen in the video and conduct a thorough probe in the matter, before acting against those responsible.

    Saluja also questioned that the CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan needs to explain how safe women and girls are at the BJP office, since the entire matter pertains to BJP office only.

    The state BJP general secretary Bhagwandas Sabnani confirmed to The New Indian Express, that the one of the girls was associated with the party and the entire matter is very serious. “The state BJP president VD Sharma has asked me to probe the entire episode and act accordingly,” Sabnani said.

  • Madhya Pradesh cabinet expanded, two Scindia loyalists return as ministers 

    By Express News Service
    BHOPAL: The wait of BJP old warhorses to get ministerial berths in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led government in Madhya Pradesh is getting longer. 

    The third cabinet expansion of the Chouhan government happened in Bhopal on Sunday, with the Governor Anandiben Patel administering oath of office and secrecy to just two new cabinet ministers, Tulsiram Silawat and Govind Singh Rajput — both Jyotiraditya Scindia loyalist former Congress legislators. 

    Ex minister Silawat (whom Scindia wanted as deputy CM in the Congress government in December 2018) and Rajput had retained their assembly seats Sanver (Indore) and Surkhi (Sagar) respectively by massive margins in the November 2020 assembly by-polls. 

    Importantly, the duo was among the four ministers who were inducted in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan cabinet in the first expansion in April 2020. But they had to resign from their posts in October as they failed to get re-elected as MLAs within six months of being made cabinet ministers. 

    The resignation by both of them as ministers in October and loss of three Scindia loyalists, Imarti Devi, Aidal Singh Kansana and Giriraj Dandotiya in the by-polls had created five vacancies in the council of ministers in addition to one existing vacant spot, meaning a total of six vacancies. 

    The defeat of the three Scindia loyalist ministers in the November 2020 assembly by-polls (in which BJP won 19 out of the 28 seats to reach comfortable majority of 126 seats), had raised hopes of several BJP veterans from Vindhya, Bundelkhand, Malwa-Nimar and Mahakoshal region to finally get a place in the council of ministers. 

    The multiple-time BJP MLAs who were eyeing the six vacant slots in the council of ministers, included Nagendra Singh-Nagod, Nagendra Singh-Gurh, Kedarnath Shukla, Rajendra Shukla, Girish Gautam and Ramlalu Vaishya (all from Vindhya region which was swept by BJP in 2018 assembly polls), Ajay Vishnoi (Mahakoshal region),  Pradeep Laria and Shailendra Jain (Bundelkhand), Sitasaran Sharma and Rampal Singh (Central MP), Yashpal Singh Sisodiya and Ramesh Mendola (Malwa-Nimar region). 

    These BJP old timers were also eyeing the posts of Vidhan Sabha speaker and deputy speaker, but the three-day State Assembly winter-session (December 28-30) was postponed on December 27 evening owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The election to the post of the speaker and deputy speaker was scheduled during that three day session only.