Bhopal: After the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost the Madhya Pradesh assembly election last year, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said of three-term chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan: “He has been left alone and aloof [by the party]”.
The words of his predecessor seem to ring all too true for Chouhan, a former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) member and five-term Lok Sabha MP, as he fights for relevance in a party eager to sideline him.
After the BJP defeat in the 2018 assembly election, Chouhan wanted to take out a statewide ‘Abhar (thanksgiving) Yatra’ to express gratitude to a state he had served as chief minister for 13 years.
But the BJP high command reportedly refused to give him permission.
Chouhan junked his plans but nevertheless hosted a ‘bhandara (mass feast)’ for the electorate in his assembly seat, Budhni, which elected him again in 2018.
At the bhandara, Chouhan told his supporters not to be disheartened with the BJP’s defeat as he stood firmly with them. “Tiger abhi zinda hai (Tiger is still alive),” he added, quoting the Salman Khan-starrer blockbuster franchise.
As the central leadership was unable to determine what role should be assigned to Chouhan in view of the coming Lok Sabha election, the former chief minister said he desired nothing but to work for and serve the people of Madhya Pradesh.
“I am emotionally attached with the 7.50 crore people of Madhya Pradesh and I have resolved to serve them till my last breath,” Chouhan said on 12 December 2018, after resigning as chief minister, in response to media questions if he would now serve as the leader of the opposition in the state or a Union minister.
“I will not go to the centre,” he added. “I will live in Madhya Pradesh and die in Madhya Pradesh.”
Chouhan was said to have thrown his hat in the ring for the post of leader of the opposition in the assembly, which is held by the leader of the party that scores the second best in elections.
But the party decided to give the post to Gopal Bhargava, an MLA from the Bundelkhand region who enjoys a close bond with the party’s national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, whose stature has risen in the party on account of his proximity with BJP national president Amit Shah.
Then, Shah sought to shunt Chouhan out of state politics altogether, by appointing him as one of seven national vice-presidents of the BJP, bringing him into an organisational role nearly 15 years after his stint as a powerful general secretary during L.K. Advani’s third tenure as party president in 2004-2005.
As the state BJP geared up for the Lok Sabha election in Madhya Pradesh, the party signalled that Chouhan was more a burden than a strength in the run-up to the 2019 elections. Ahead of the assembly polls, the RSS had advised the BJP to change at least 100 of the state’s 165 sitting MLAs to beat anti-incumbency.
Chouhan was given a free hand in the selection of candidates, but the state BJP leadership could change only 56 MLAs, and the party ended up losing the election — from a brute majority of 165 in 2013, its share in the 230-member assembly dropped to 109.
In the 16-member state election management committee formed subsequently for the Lok Sabha elections, the three-term chief minister was ranked 13th.
Also read: EC to probe Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s ‘chopper’ row with Madhya Pradesh IAS officer
Falling fortunes
Chouhan, who was reportedly vying for a Lok Sabha nomination, is said to have discovered that he would not get a ticket only after the BJP officially announced candidates from Bhopal and Vidisha, his former constituency.
Sources close to Chouhan told ThePrint that the leader was given no idea, and that he was upset the party had not had the courtesy to inform him beforehand.
The BJP has fielded first-timers from both seats: While Ramakant Bhargav has been fielded from Vidisha, the RSS-BJP has thrown its weight behind Pragya Singh Thakur, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case, from Bhopal, where Congress has fielded heavyweight Digvijaya Singh.
Of the BJP candidates for the state’s 29 Lok Sabha seats, less than six are Chouhan supporters.
When Chouhan floated the idea that he was eager to contest from Vidisha, which he represented in the Lok Sabha between 1991 and 2006 and where External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is the incumbent, former Rajya Sabha member and senior party leader Raghunandan Sharma is said to have created an obstacle.
“Senior leaders like Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who is already an MLA, should not contest or decide on the name of the candidates,” Sharma had said on 12 March, while speaking to journalists at the state BJP office in Bhopal, after a meeting of senior leaders on poll strategy.
Chouhan was even unable to manage a ticket for his wife Sadhna, who established herself as a power centre in Madhya Pradesh during his chief ministership and was aspiring to contest from the Vidisha Lok Sabha seat.
Ever since, Chouhan is said to have been struggling to understand why he is being dealt this rough hand.
He has been travelling across the state alone, accusing the Kamal Nath-led state government for cheating farmers in the name of loan waivers and is regularly heard singing, “Hum se kya bhool hui jo ye saja hum ko mili (What mistake did I make to get this punishment)?”
Also read: This man from Madhya Pradesh wants to defeat both Kamal Nath & his son on the same day
Served for three terms, almost fifteen years, lost by a whisker. There should be no regrets. New power alignments could emerge after 23rd May. Age is also very much on his side.