New Delhi: The BJP is going all out to induct the Congress’ OBC face in Madhya Pradesh, Arun Subhash Yadav, ahead of the state polls next year. On multiple occasions since the 2018 assembly election, the BJP has made appeals to Yadav to join the party, including last week.
The latest appeal came straight from Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, just ahead of the MP local body polls, which are scheduled for 6 July and 13 July.
Chouhan, making a speech while campaigning for the polls, asked Yadav to join the BJP.
“What are you doing in the Congress, Arun bhaiya? Come and join the BJP. In the Congress, only Kamal Nath is ruling. First, he became (state) president, then chief minister… he is everywhere. What will you do there? Who is taking care of you in the Congress?” the CM asked.
The purpose behind wooing Yadav, said BJP insiders, is two-fold — firstly, to strengthen the BJP base in the state’s Nimar region, where the Congressman holds sway, and, secondly, to weaken the Congress.
The Nimar region, which includes Khandwa and Khargone, was once a BJP stronghold that was wrested by the Congress in 2018.
“Arun Yadav is a young OBC leader who has influence in Khargone region where the party lost all seats in the assembly election of 2018,” said a BJP source.
Madhya Pradesh BJP vice-president Jitu Jirati said the party respects “young talent and labour of young aspiring leaders”.
“In the BJP, there is space for everybody. Arun Yadav was state Congress president (in 2014) and worked tirelessly on the ground. But when it was time to give him credit, neither did he get a Rajya Sabha seat nor a role in the government when Kamal Nath became chief minister (in 2018),” he added. “The Congress never respects the aspirations of young leaders like Yadav.”
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Eyeing Yadav
The BJP came to power in Madhya Pradesh in March 2020 after the then Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia’s defection from the party with nearly two dozen MLAs. His move led to the fall of Kamal Nath’s 15-month-old government.
To win the assembly election in 2023, the BJP is aiming to weaken the Congress further by winning over strong leaders such as Yadav, according to party sources.
In Madhya Pradesh, 51 per cent of the population comprises OBCs, according to some estimates. The Yadavs make up around 13 per cent of the electorate.
Since the demise of former MP chief minister Babulal Gaur Yadav, the BJP has lacked a Yadav leader in the state.
The party is also looking for a strong leader to replace the late Nandkumar Chauhan, its strongman in the Nimar region. Nandkumar was a six-time MP from Khandwa between 1996 and 2019 (losing only in 2009).
That the top BJP leadership in Madhya Pradesh has rested its sights on Arun Yadav is evident in the frequent appeals to him, and remembrance of his father, the late Congressman Subhash Yadav, who was deputy chief minister in MP from 1993 to 1998.
He was also a key state OBC leader but could not get the chief minister’s post despite being seen as a contender in 1993, when Digvijaya Singh became CM.
Last month, MP home minister Narottam Mishra commented that the “BJP has given Madhya Pradesh three chief ministers from the OBC community (Chouhan, Uma Bharti, and Babulal Gaur)”.
In 2018, before the assembly election, BJP’s former state president Prabhat Jha had asked Arun Yadav to join the party, while Mishra had extended an invitation before the Khandwa bypoll of 2021, which was necessitated by Nandkumar’s death that year. Other senior state cabinet ministers have also made the same offer to Arun Yadav.
‘Exploiting cracks’
Like it did for Scindia, the BJP is working to exploit what it describes as Arun Yadav’s “marginalisation in the Congress”.
Yadav started his journey from student politics, was Union Minister of State (2009-2011) during Manmohan Singh’s tenure at the Centre, and rose to become the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) president in 2014.
He is known to have worked hard on the ground to bring the Congress to power in 2018, but was replaced by Kamal Nath as MPCC chief ahead of the assembly polls.
Yadav had won as an MP from Khandwa in 2009 against the BJP’s Nandkumar Chauhan but lost to him in 2014 and 2019.
After Chouhan’s appeal to him last week to join the BJP, Yadav tweeted in reply: “Thanks for honouring a simple worker of the Congress. The Congress has given me and my family enough without even asking. We will come to power by forming a Congress government in Madhya Pradesh.”
Prior to the Lok Sabha bypoll in Khandwa in 2021, Yadav had opted out of the race and spoken about his resentment while campaigning.
“Fasal main ugata hoon, kaat koi aur lae jata hai (I grow the crop but someone else comes and cuts it). This happened with me in 2018 also,” he had said, in an apparent reference to the state leadership being given to Kamal Nath that year.
In April this year, Yadav was a claimant for the Rajya Sabha seat in MP, and even sought to remind Kamal Nath “to respect OBC share in power” at a party meeting, but was denied the nomination. Sitting MP Vivek Tankha was nominated instead by the Congress.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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