Why tough challenges lie ahead for BJP's new chief in Madhya Pradesh
The Madhya Pradesh unit of the BJP finally got a new state president - Rakesh Singh, a three-time Lok Sabha MP from Jabalpur. Singh replaces Khandwa MP Nandkumar Singh Chauhan, whose removal was on the cards for some months.
Now that the dust has settled around who would replace Chauhan, with the process of replacement marked by intense lobbying by state BJP leaders, let's take a look at the challenges that lie ahead for the BJP’s new state president.
Chauhan’s removal comes after the BJP failed to win even one of the three Assembly by-elections held in the state in 2018, at Chitrakoot, Mungaoli and Kolaras. The state goes to the Assembly polls in November 2018, and Rakesh Singh has been brought in at a time when the party has to face its big battle in a few months.
While CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan is a battle-tested veteran of many campaigns, Rakesh Singh has no such experience. Even though he is an energetic leader and was co-holding the charge of Maharashtra, he isn’t a wartime general. Considering this, the state BJP has also constituted a campaign committee headed by Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar who, as state BJP president in 2013 and 2008, was Chouhan’s wingman. Singh will need all the help he can get from Tomar.
One of the reasons why Chauhan was removed was that he got identified as a “Shivraj Singh Chouhan man”, which prevented him from exercising his discretion even in party matters. Nandu bhaiya, as he is called in MP, would always act as per the CM’s wishes.
The CM was happy with a party president not having a mind of his own, but it had its pitfalls. While a great degree of coordination is warranted between the CM and the state party president, completely giving in to the CM doesn’t make you earn brownie points with the central unit of the party, especially president Amit Shah.
Singh was once an Uma Bharti loyalist and was close to former Union minister Prahlad Patel. Chouhan and the sadhvi have never gotten along and Patel too is not an admirer of the CM, which could result in Rakesh Singh being his own man, to a certain extent.
Another tough job for Singh is to work out a formula for selecting candidates for constituencies and deny tickets to sitting MLAs, which is not an envious job. The BJP has been in power for three terms and denying tickets to MLAs is one tried-and-tested method of bucking anti-incumbency. As per estimates, 40 per cent-50 per cent MLAs may lose tickets, resulting in some degree of sabotage which will have to be contained.
Singh faces a trial by fire but his start has been reasonably smooth, given that the Congress continues to be on its own trip, unmindful of political situations it could have exploited to its advantage.
Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh, termed Rakesh Singh a “lightweight”, but still Congress leaders could not capitalise on the transition.
The Congress could easily have claimed that it was the successive defeats it handed out at by-elections that prompted the BJP to change its state president, but the party presently seems too lost in trying to work out a way to move forward in planning the Assembly elections.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)