BHOPAL: With just seven months into office, the Mohan Yadav-led BJP government in Madhya Pradesh stares at a possible political storm.
First-time cabinet minister and fourth-time tribal MLA Nagarsingh Chouhan (left with the scheduled caste welfare ministry, now) said he might quit the council of ministers in the next two days. He was upset by being divested of the key forest and environment ministry’s portfolio on Sunday.
Chouhan added that while he may quit as a minister of the MP government, Anita Nagarsingh Chouhan, first-time Lok Sabha member and his wife might quit as well.
The 64-year-old and six-times former Congress MLA Ramnivas Rawat (inducted into the state cabinet on July 8) was assigned the key forest and environment ministry. Hurt by it Chouhan announced on Monday that he was contemplating quitting as minister and also hinted at his wife’s resignation from the Lok Sabha.
“I’ve been serving the party for the last 25 years. I've been a BJP karyakarta when no one even carried the party’s flag in Alirajpur district. However, the CM and the party did not even take me into confidence before divesting me of the forest and environment portfolio. More painful is the fact that the ministry has been assigned to someone who has come from Congress has become a minister in the state government within few minutes. I’ve already discussed the issue with the state BJP president, VD Sharma, and will put my entire pain on the party forum in the next two days. If my pains as a tribal politician aren’t addressed, then I may quit as a minister and my wife as a Lok Sabha member in the coming days. I need not be a minister to take up the tribal cause; I can do it even by remaining an MLA,” Chouhan told journalists in Bhopal.
When asked if this pressure in politics had anything to do with the possibility of him being dropped in a future cabinet reshuffle as a minister (as it was not in line with the party's practice that an MLA remains a minister while his wife is an MP), Chouhan said, “I didn’t plead for the party's ticket for my wife in the recent LS polls. It was the party that chose my wife and Alirajpur district panchayat chairperson as the candidate. We didn’t disappoint, as she won by more than 2 lakh votes, which is the highest winning margin ever from the seat. Now if the party feels that two members of the same family cannot have key responsibilities, then I’ll quit as minister and remain an MLA only, while my wife will quit as an MP.”
This unprecedented development of Monday, particularly, assumed significance on three counts.
Firstly, the first-time minister’s hint about possible resignation by his first-time MP wife (who defeated Congress veteran Kantilal Bhuria by 2.07 lakh votes) happened on the first day of Lok Sabha’s budget session and on the eve of the Modi 3.0 regime’s first annual budget presentation, when the Narendra Modi-led NDA government desperately needs its own numbers to be intact before a resilient and united Opposition.
Secondly, the development happened just a few days after the Bharatiya Adivasi Party (BAP), the emerging political force in the Bheelanchal region of western MP, demanded a separate Bhil state out of the Bhil tribe-dominant districts of bordering states (MP, Gujarat, and Rajasthan).
As a powerful Bhilala tribe leader, Chouhan is emerging as the BJP's young and powerful face in the region and holds the key to countering the BAP in the concerned region.
He recently showed his political power, by winning over a key young tribal leader, Mahendra Kanoje (who heads one of the factions of the influential JAYS tribal outfit), into the BJP.
Further, Chouhan (considered to be former MP CM and current union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s loyalist) spun the narrative of a core BJP leader like him being divested of key portfolio to appease someone who joined the BJP during LS polls from the Congress, is bound to give a voice to a large part of the old BJP warhorses/MLAs who are feeling left out within the current ruling party dispensation in MP due to the induction of a deluge of politicians from the Congress.