BHOPAL: Who’ll be the next chief minister is the million dollar question crossing the minds of political and bureaucratic circles in Madhya Pradesh, a day after the ruling BJP’s resounding 163-66 seats assembly polls victory over the Congress in the central Indian state.
While the saffron party’s longest serving CM in the country, Shivraj Singh Chouhan remains the preferred choice, particularly following the key role played by his game-changer Ladli Behna Scheme in the assembly polls, other names too are doing rounds. While the ball on who will be the next CM is squarely in the court of the national leadership in Delhi, the state party circles are abuzz particularly with four names – Union ministers Prahlad Singh Patel and Jyotiraditya Scindia (both leaders of OBC category which forms around half of the state’s population), party’s national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya and powerful Thakur leader and Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar.
Dark horses in the CM’s race include two Brahmin leaders, state party chief and first-time MP VD Sharma and fifth time MLA and state cabinet minister Rajendra Shukla, who hail from the Vindhya region. Importantly UP, Gujarat and Maharashtra already have non-Brahmin CMs and to ensure that the prime upper caste Brahmin continues to be with the BJP in the Hindi heartland, the party may well opt for these dark horses.