Madhya Pradesh: Wonders never cease, Shivraj Chouhan is class monitor!

The announcement that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set up a monitoring group headed by Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to review progress of schemes and promises made since 2014 has caused much amusement.

In his home state, Chouhan is known as ‘ghoshna veer’ — the man of many promises. The opposition has accused him of failing to fulfil the 22,000 promises he is believed to have made between 2005 and 2023 as chief minister. So now, the king of empty promises is to monitor the emperor of blah? That’s a laugh.

On a more serious note, the BJP veteran might likely be ‘elected’ BJP president. Chouhan has a gift for being obsequious. His detractors grudgingly admit he is flexible, with friends across the political divide. He also has been loyal to the RSS and, barring flashes of defiance, respectful to both Modi and Amit Shah.

However, his relationship with Modi has been cool verging on frosty. Modi did not invoke Chouhan even once during last year’s assembly campaign. Despite Chouhan pulling off an unlikely victory for the BJP, he was denied another innings as CM.

In a recent photograph shared by Chouhan of his entire family calling on the prime minister at home, Chouhan is one big grin while Modi is a tad short of grim. Word went that the visit was to lobby for his son Kartikeya (26) to be nominated for the Budhni assembly constituency, which Chouhan had vacated after winning a Lok Sabha seat this year.

Instead, the BJP nominated Ramakant Bhargava for the byelection slated for 13 November. Nominating his son would have looked bad, explains the Chouhan camp, while Bhargava can be asked to vacate the seat anytime Chouhan chooses.

Could Chouhan have been asked to head the monitoring committee to make him face the music for unfulfilled promises? The move could be a strategy to firewall Modi from criticism or even pave the ground for easing him out in future. Is it the RSS then which is moving in for the kill or is it Modi who has seen the writing on the wall and is preparing the ground for an honourable exit?

The BJP membership (over)drive

Ajay Bishnoi, sitting BJP MLA in the MP Assembly, lodged an FIR complaining that a firm had approached him, offering to enrol fake members for the BJP in exchange for money.

The FIR lodged at the Omti police station claimed that the firm itself was fake. As police investigated the fake enrolment racket, Congress MLA from Jabalpur, Lakhan Ghanghoria and a former Congress legislator Vinay Saxena said they had received congratulatory mobile messages on becoming BJP members.

The national membership drive launched on 1 September this year by the BJP is ostensibly meant to enrol 1.5 crore members in the state. (Remember that the BJP polled 2.14 crore votes in MP in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year). BJP state president V.D. Sharma said three lakh party workers and ‘leaders’ were assigned the task of door-to-door campaigns.

Recruitment by any means included making a missed call. Media reported people saying they were being coerced into enrolling themselves as members. Students at a polytechnic college in Guna district were approached after an AIDS awareness workshop, and told to make a missed call for more information on the auto-immune deficiency disease. The number to be dialled was the membership drive number.

Hello? At a PDS ration dealer’s outlet in the Berasia area of Bhopal, people complained of details being collected to inflate the numbers of BJP members on the pretext of completing know your customer (KYC) norms. Another report claimed that in the BJP president’s own constituency of Chhattarpur, a driver from Uttar Pradesh filed a police complaint after he was assaulted by BJP workers for refusing to cough up details.

An audio clip surfaced in Chhindwara in which a supervisor could be heard exhorting anganwadi workers to motivate each team member to ensure the presence of at least 10 beneficiaries of the Ladli Behen Yojana for an event at Laxmi Bhavan. Failure to meet the target would invite trouble, they were warned.

Interestingly, the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has opposed the BJP membership drive in colleges. Media reported a fracas at Indore’s Holkar Science College when BJP MLA Golu Shukla tried to convince ABVP students otherwise. College principal Suresh Silawat then issued a communiqué that no political event would occur on the campus without permission from the ABVP. Ahem.

ABVP members also protested when BJP MLA Uma Devi Khatik and her son visited Damoh’s Shri Raghvendra Singh Hazari Government Degree College. Although Khatik said her visit had nothing to do with the membership drive, she was forced to leave. When the second phase of the membership drive concluded on 16 October, BJP president V.D. Sharma claimed that the target had been exceeded in the state.

Over 1.22 crore people had signed up digitally, and offline membership figures were awaited. In the run-up to the election of a new BJP chief in January 2025, the party is adding and renewing its membership lists.

This otherwise routine exercise, which occurs every six years, is crucial for the party this time as it will be a measure of its popularity rating after being reduced to 240 seats in the recent Lok Sabha elections.

The leader of the opposition in the assembly, Umang Singhar, alleged that the BJP had used government machinery and data in meeting their target. “Why did the BJP, which won all 29 Lok Sabha seats in the state and secured a brute majority in the Assembly with a record number of 165 seats, have to resort to such desperate measures,” he wondered.

This is the BJP’s second membership drive in Madhya Pradesh this year. Soon after the assembly polls, the state BJP formed a membership committee headed by former state home minister Narottam Mishra.

The party claimed that as many as 16,111 Congress leaders and workers as well as a handful of leaders from the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) joined the party in March and April.

State Congress spokesperson K.K. Mishra said that the party was undergoing a “purification campaign” and while “true Congress members were staying back, the BJP has become a dustbin where the garbage of the Congress is being thrown”.

Pleas, threats and allegations galore

No wonder the video went viral. There was the BJP MLA from Mauganj Pradeep Patel prostrating himself before the Rewa Superintendent of Police. This wasn’t any traditional greeting—it was apparently a plea for help. The legislator had come seeking protection from the liquor mafia in the state. Bizarrely, former minister Ajay Bishnoi supported Patel, saying, “You have raised the right issue, but what can we do? The entire government is bowing before the liquor contractors”.

Patel is not the only one. Another BJP MLA Pradeep Lariya from Sagar lodged a police complaint over the illegal sale of liquor in his constituency. The state’s liquor mafia’s hold on the government is one of several issues being raised. In October alone, at least six BJP MLAs, including three former ministers have pointed fingers at the leadership.

The unrest in the BJP has been marked by resignations, sit-ins and outbursts in the media. Brij Bihari Pateria, an MLA from Sagar, sent his resignation letter to the Speaker and sat on a dharna outside a police station demanding an FIR against a government doctor for allegedly refusing to issue a death certificate to a man killed by snakebite—until he was given a bribe.

“Incidents of rape are happening far too frequently… are we really worthy of burning Ravana… we have failed to provide a safe environment for our sisters and daughters,” posted Gopal Bhargava, former minister and nine-term MLA on X.

Sanjay Pathak from Katni, one of the richest MLAs in the state, claimed that his life was in danger. He alleged his Aadhaar number had been tampered with and suspicious strangers were lurking outside his house in Jabalpur. Last month, two former ministers Lalita Yadav and Manvendra Singh publicly accused union minister for social justice Virendra Khatik of having posted people with criminal backgrounds in various departments as his representatives.

The union minister hit back, saying his efforts to curb irregularities threatened to bring the skeletons tumbling out of the former ministers’ closets.

The party leadership was compelled to summon its quarrelling children to Bhopal, where they were sternly told to behave themselves and desist from embarrassing the government.