BHOPAL: Aiming to beat anti-incumbency, balance caste equations and address long-pending regional aspirations, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan expanded his three-and-a-half-year-old cabinet with three inclusions on Saturday.
The exercise is being seen among political quarters as unusual as it is happening barely three months before the Assembly polls. Among the three new ministers, two former ministers, including seven-time sitting MLA from Balaghat of Mahakoshal region, 71-year-old Gaurishankar Bisen and fourth-time MLA from Rewa seat in Baghelkhand area of Vindhya region, 59-year-old Rajendra Shukla, were sworn in as cabinet ministers by the state’s Governor Mangubhai C Patel.
Six days after Union Home Minister Amit Shah defined “dynastic politics” as ownership of a party or government by a “single family” and added that fielding of “competent kin” of existing or past politicians as BJP candidates in polls “wasn’t politics of dynasty”, the MP CM inducted former CM and ex-union minister Uma Bharti’s first-time MLA nephew from Bundelkhand region Rahul Singh Lodhi as a Minister of State.
Among the three new inductees, while Bisen and Lodhi belong to the influential OBC segment, which comprises around half of the state’s voters, Shukla is an influential Brahmin leader from the Vindhya region, which was the saffron party’s lone bright spot in the 2018 elections.
While Bisen hails from the Powar caste (which has a strong presence on seats of the Mahakoshal region neighbouring Maharashtra), Lodhi is from the powerful Lodhi caste of Bundelkhand, central MP and some pockets of the Gwalior-Chambal region.
After Saturday’s cabinet rejig, the 34-strong council of ministers, now has 13 OBC ministers, 12 ministers from the upper caste (3 Brahmins, 8 Thakurs and One Kshatriya), four tribals, three from scheduled caste and one each from the Sikh and Jain community.
Making light of Saturday’s cabinet rejig, the state Congress chief Kamal Nath said, “Cabinet expansion in the last days of the present regime is like a welcome song at the time of farewell.”
Book on PM released
A two-volume book, ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas,’ compiling PM Narendra Modi’s speeches and addresses between June 2020 and May 2021 and June 2021 and May 2022, was released by I&B Minister Anurag Thakur in Bhopal on Saturday.
Highlighting how Modi’s addresses have consistently served as a source of inspiration, the union minister said “Each of his speeches contains have lessons to be learned.”