Election later this year in MP could change a lot of equations in the BJP

Between September and December last year, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways unveiled new National Highway projects worth nearly Rs 7,000 crore. Thirteen of these are located in the Jabalpur and Mandla regions and seven in Gwalior. The Airports Authority of India will commission Jabalpur airport’s new terminal by March. And as elections come round by the end of the year, Madhya Pradesh (MP) Chief Minister (CM) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan is expected to make more announcements of goodies for the state. Among these are the Global Investors Summit (GIS), to be held in MP this year, and the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD). Both are expected to open the door to not just investment but employment in the state (see adjoining interview).

But will all this help?

Even as the Gujarat election results — which saw the BJP getting a spectacular tally in the Assembly — were pouring in on December 8, the BJP MLA from Madhya Pradesh’s Satna district, Narayan Tripathi, shot off a letter to party National President

J P Nadda, seeking changes in both the Chouhan-led government and V D Sharma-led state organisation, just like
neighbouring Gujarat had done.

In his letter, Tripathi said: “Small workers like me who are always the party’s well-wishers and want the party to again form a government in Madhya Pradesh on the lines of Gujarat, urge that taking into account the wishes of party workers, there should be a total change in the government and organisation of the state. This is needed for the start of a new era in the state, so that anti-incumbency among the people is settled and new people are given an opportunity. (There should be a) new methodology for running the government and organisation, as a result of which a victory similar to Gujarat can be repeated in MP.”
 

The BJP has been in power in MP for nearly two decades (barring a gap in 2018-20), but the strain of anti-incumbency is beginning to show. This was most clearly evident in the 2018 Assembly election, when the Congress managed to get 114 seats out of the 230, just two short of a majority and formed a government, only to lose it 15 months later as Jyotiraditya Scindia and 22 MLAs crossed the floor to join the BJP.
 

In this, the BJP reversed its earlier humiliation — something the party is determined to prevent in the next round of Assembly elections. The only answer, many in the party including Narayan Tripathi believe, is to put the party through a thorough purge.

MP Home Minister Narottam Mishra, whose antipathy to Chouhan is the worst-kept secret in the BJP, has already announced the party will have to pull up its socks. “It has been decided that all the ministers will take ground information by meeting and interacting with the district and divisional-level workers of the party,” he told reporters last week. He also said from January 4, the state government would start the Mukhyamantri Bhu-Adhikar Awas Yojana, a scheme to provide land rights for housing in rural areas. The process of corralling together the Labharthi (beneficiaries) of government schemes, both central and state, has also begun. The outreach to beneficiaries produced positive results in Uttar Pradesh and the BJP wants to replicate this in MP as well.

But more than this, what ministers and MLAs are dreading alike is The Call that tells them what the verdict is going to be. In Gujarat half a dozen prominent ministers were not fielded in the Assembly polls, effectively putting their political career to an end. These included former CM Vijay Rupani and former deputy CM Nitin Patel, considered heavyweights. Although there is still no clarity on a change right at the top, that is, replacing Chouhan, no one is ruling this out.
 

However, the expectation is that the party leadership will want 40-50 per cent of the sitting MLAs replaced. The party will also have to find ways of accommodating the “newcomers”: The 22 MLAs who feel they are owed because their defection from the Congress to the BJP brought the party back to power.

The signal to watch will be the reverse traffic — from the BJP to the Congress, as MLAs are denied BJP nomination. Of course, whether this is significant at all, given the low stock of many sitting BJP MLAs, is another matter.

Congress leader Kamal Nath is determined to fight back this time. He resigned as leader of the Opposition in the Assembly in April last year to give his all to the party as the state chief of the Congress.

The MP election could change a lot of equations.