Bhopal: Former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan of the BJP is back in action, hitting the streets to corner the Congress government in Madhya Pradesh and re-building his political brand that took a hit in the assembly elections last year.
Over the past three weeks, he has held protests and led candlelight marches over incidents of rape and murder and targeted the government over power outage and various other issues.
It’s a role reversal for Chouhan, who was in power for 13 years until last December, when he was ousted by the Kamal Nath-led Congress.
His defeat in the polls was followed by a sidelining in the party as BJP president Amit Shah chose not to make him the leader of the opposition in the assembly and brought him to Delhi as national vice-president, a relatively ceremonial post.
Earlier this month, he was appointed head of the party’s membership drive, an important assignment from the organisational point of view but not exactly one of political heft. Chouhan has nevertheless pounced on the opportunity to travel across states to boost the drive and enhance his national profile.
It is, however, his role as an opposition leader in Madhya Pradesh that has caught his party colleagues’ eyes.
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On the streets
On 21 June, a day after the state government ordered a judicial inquiry into the death of a 26-year-old property dealer who had allegedly been beaten by police, Chouhan met the bereaved family and organised a protest, demanding a CBI inquiry.
“People will take to the streets if an FIR is not filed against the accused policemen within seven days,” he warned.
On 9 June, he hit the streets in protest after the body of a minor girl, who had allegedly been raped, was found in a drain close to her house in Bhopal’s Kamla Nagar.
The next day, a Monday, Chouhan visited the family in the morning and, in the evening, led BJP leaders in a candlelight march in the city over the rising incidence of rape in the state and police’s “insensitive attitude”.
When schools reopened on 23 June after the summer vacation, “Mama”, as Chouhan is fondly known among admirers, wished students, whom he referred to as “bhanje-bhanjion (nephews and nieces)”, all the best and urged them to focus on studies and respect teachers.
Two days ago, Chouhan took a swipe at Nath by retweeting a viral picture that suggested the CM’s photo-op with an elderly woman was a bad photoshop job.
On Tuesday, he was in Budhni for a mass wedding.
कमलनाथ जी, ये तीसरा हाथ किसका है? 🙂 https://t.co/bwrixuADl4
— Shivraj Singh Chouhan (@ChouhanShivraj) June 23, 2019
No sulking
Chouhan’s activism as an opposition leader is in sharp contrast to Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s angry and sulking response to his defeat in the Lok Sabha elections.
Instead of learning a lesson from his defeat and going to the people to re-connect with them, Gandhi has chosen an easier route, offering to resign as party president, a move that stopped all talks about his accountability for the defeat.
The past month has witnessed a chorus by Gandhi-Nehru family loyalists beseeching him to withdraw his offer.
Not to speak of hitting the roads to mobilise the people, Gandhi hasn’t even gone back to Amethi after losing the pocketborough to the BJP’s Smriti Irani. The Congress president could take a leaf or two from Shivraj Chouhan’s book on how to do politics as an opposition leader.
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