BJP's MP strategy a repeat of Gujarat, Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh

In the assembly elections held since November 2022, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has sought votes not for its local leadership but for its election symbol, the lotus, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership. It is a strategy the BJP will replicate in the poll-bound Hindi heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan, where it has yet to project any chief ministerial faces.

On Monday evening, the BJP central leadership shocked its Madhya Pradesh state leadership when it announced the fielding of seven Lok Sabha members, including three Union ministers. By evening, the party only feebly tried to quash speculation that it could be the end of the road for its incumbent chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, now that it has fielded at least two potential rivals in Union ministers Narendra Singh Tomar and Pralhad Singh Patel.

However, party sources said the fielding of MPs and party general secretary Kailash Vijayavargiya from seats it had lost in 2018 was a signal that the party was putting its best foot forward, and that senior leaders should prove their mettle and check factional feuds. The opposition Congress, however, said the step betrayed the BJP's desperation to beat the growing fatigue against the Chouhan government but would fail.

Chouhan, the state's longest-serving chief minister, has ruled Madhya Pradesh, apart from a 15-month hiatus between December 2018 and March 2020, since November 2005. On Tuesday, Chouhan addressed his council of ministers and senior bureaucrats. He listed the achievements of his government's last three and a half years — the challenges of the pandemic months and achieving an economic growth of 17 per cent. He detailed his government's social welfare schemes and capital expenditure.

The BJP has not projected a chief ministerial face in assembly polls held since the winter of 2022. In Gujarat, the BJP dropped Vijay Rupani as the chief minister a year before the December 2022 assembly polls and even refused him a party ticket. It fought the election under Modi's leadership. In the Himachal Pradesh assembly polls in November 2022, Modi appealed to the electorate to vote for the "lotus", not the BJP candidate, and said each of their votes would reach "Modi's account as a blessing". It didn't project incumbent Chief Minister Jairam Thakur as its chief ministerial face. The story was similar in Karnataka, where it replaced B S Yediyurappa nearly two years before the elections. However, it neither projected his successor, Basavaraj Bommai, as its chief ministerial face in the April 2023 elections. The Prime Minister led the election campaign.

In Madhya Pradesh, two of the ministers, Narendra Singh Tomar and Faggan Singh Kulaste, will be contesting from seats that were won by the Congress in 2018, while three of the four other Lok Sabha MPs will also fight in constituencies where the main opposition party had emerged victorious in the last assembly polls. The BJP is unlikely to project a chief ministerial face in Rajasthan or Chhattisgarh.