Homework | Collective Leadership Under PM Modi & Lotus, No CM Face: BJP’s Mantra for State Elections

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) began its campaign early in the four key states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Telangana, and so far one thing seems clear — the BJP is projecting no Chief Ministerial face in any of these states. The poll mantra is that of a ‘collective leadership under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the party’s poll symbol, the lotus’.

On the face of it, this looks to be a bold move to not project three of the most prominent faces the party has. Shivraj Singh Chouhan has been the Chief Minister (CM) in Madhya Pradesh for four terms. He is still the tallest Other Backward Class (OBC) face the party has in a state with over 50% OBC population. In Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje Scindia has brought the BJP to power twice, defeating Ashok Gehlot. Raman Singh was in power as the CM of Chhattisgarh for three straight terms till 2018.

So has the BJP decided to take a leap of faith in the upcoming polls?

One apparent reason for the BJP to not put all its eggs in one basket when it comes to the CM face is the factor of anti-incumbency or the electorate’s fatigue with the BJP’s established faces. Chouhan has been the CM for over 17 years in MP. The last elections saw the Congress coming to power before Chouhan made a comeback as the CM within 15 months thanks to a “palace coup" by Jyotiraditya Scindia. Now, Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar has also re-entered state politics and he is seen as senior to Chouhan. Tomar has said there is no BJP CM face in MP.

In Rajasthan, the last election mandate was essentially one against Raje with the people voting out her government in November 2018, before giving all 25 Lok Sabha seats in the state to the BJP. ‘Modi tujhse vair nahi, Rani teri khair nahi (no fight with Modi, but we won’t spare the queen)’ was a slogan much heard in the 2018 Rajasthan elections. Since then, the BJP has nurtured new leadership in Rajasthan in Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and Rajsamand MP Diya Kumari — both adversarial to Vasundhara Raje.

In Chhattisgarh, Raman Singh won three elections consecutively, but the party collapsed to a shocking defeat at the hands of the Congress in the last elections, with a vote gap of over 10%. Singh hasn’t been projected although there is not much competition to Singh’s standing in the party in Chhattisgarh and he continues to occupy the centre-space in party rallies. PM Modi also mentioned Singh in his rally in Bilaspur on Saturday, while he did not mention Chouhan or Raje in his last rallies in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

FREEBIES VS WOMEN RESERVATION PITCH

After losing Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka amid the poll freebies rolled out by the Congress, the BJP is keen to wrest back Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh from the Congress and retain Madhya Pradesh. On the other hand, if one goes by the words of Rahul Gandhi, the Congress is confident of winning all three states and Telangana as well. The Congress game is simple — keep its winning formula of freebies going to blunt the BJP’s ‘nationalist’ agenda as well as the latest hard-selling of the passing of the Women Reservation Bill to woo women voters.

The Congress feels the poll freebies would outweigh all factors for women voters, who stand to get monetary doles as well as cheaper LPG cylinders, rather than wait for a women’s reservation bill, which won’t be a reality any time soon. One senior party leader from Rajasthan told News18 that it is the rollout of the freebies that seems to have brought the Congress back in the game in Rajasthan in the last few months, despite anti-incumbency against Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot. The same seems the case in Chhattisgarh. In Telangana, the Congress’s six guarantees as poll freebies are troubling the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).

The situation in Madhya Pradesh, however, is the most intriguing. Here, BJP CM Shivraj Chouhan has gone ahead on his level and rolled out poll freebies such as Rs 1,250 per month dole-out to 1.3 crore women in the state and the country’s cheapest LPG cylinder at just Rs 450. This came after the Congress had announced similar promises if it came to power. The BJP has not gone for such a counter in any other state. “This is the CM’s initiative, not that of the central BJP. The election results will tell if it was effective," a senior BJP leader told News18. The PM has so far mentioned neither of the two ‘freebies’ in his rallies.

Will the move to not announce a CM face and not offering freebies, except in Madhya Pradesh, end up being a ‘masterstroke’ or a ‘disaster’? The results of the elections later this year will show.