Three new Ministers were inducted into Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s Cabinet in Madhya Pradesh on Saturday, an exercise seen as an attempt to balance caste and regional equations ahead of polls due in the State in around 100 days.
Among the three new faces to be sworn-in are Gaurishankar Bisen and Rajendra Shukla, both former Ministers and MLAs for multiple terms. The third, Rahul Lodhi, a first-time MLA, is a nephew of former Chief Minister Uma Bharti, and is referred to as her political successor.
While all three leaders played down the relatively short tenure they would have, sources in the ruling BJP said the last-minute exercise has been carried out with an eye on 94 seats in the Vindhya, Mahakoshal and Bundelkhand regions of the State. Mr. Chouhan’s Cabinet of 31 ministers before Saturday’s mini-expansion had 20 Ministers from the Gwalior-Chambal and Malwa-Nimar regions put together, and had not been expanded since 2020.
Of the new inductees, Mr. Bisen (from Balaghat in Mahakoshal) and Mr. Lodhi (from Khargapur in Bundelkhand) represent the Pawar and Lodhi caste groups of the Other Backward Classes (OBC), respectively. Mr. Shukla is a Brahmin leader from the Vindhya region, where the community has a strong presence and threw its weight behind the BJP in 2018 by giving the party 24 of the 30 seats in the region.
Placating Uma
A source in the BJP said that Mr. Lodhi’s entry into the Council of Ministers is an attempt to prevent Ms. Bharti from making any adverse comments against the party. Notably, the former CM had raised the issue of caste and regional imbalance in the Madhya Pradesh Cabinet in September 2022. Three months later, at an event of the Lodhi community — a numerically significant OBC caste group that has traditionally backed the BJP — she said that Lodhis were not bound to vote for the party even if she herself asked for their votes. She had also alleged that her picture was kept out of the party’s publicity material throughout the year but during elections, it was used to woo voters (from the community).
“From that lens, it [Mr. Lodhi’s induction] should also not be seen in isolation. The BJP has already fielded her distant relative Pritam Singh Lodhi from the Pichhore Assembly seat for the 2023 Assembly polls. Also, for this particular berth, Mr. Lodhi faced stiff competition from Jalam Singh Patel, brother of Union Minister Prahlad Singh Patel, but his name prevailed after intense deliberation,” the source said, adding that the expansion had been approved by Union Home Minister Amit Shah over a month ago, but many on-ground adjustments had to be made before finalising the names.
Securing Vindhya
On Mr. Shukla, the source added, the factors included checking the attempts by dissident Brahmin BJP MLA from Vindhya region Narayan Tripathi to rally the community in the name of a separate Vindhya Pradesh. It’s also learnt that Mr. Shukla, a four-time MLA, was upset over the return to the party earlier this month of former MLA couple Abhay Mishra and Neelam Mishra, both of whom have represented the Semariya Assembly constituency in the past and were in the Congress for five years.
Checking the Naths
As for Mr. Bisen, his influence over the Pawar community will be crucial in the polls, especially in cornering former Chief Minister and State Congress Chief Kamal Nath in the latter’s stronghold of Chhindwara, also in the Mahakoshal region.
Reacting to the development, Mr. Nath took a dig at the BJP government and posted on X (formerly Twitter) that a defeat for the party was certain even if the entire Cabinet was changed.
Meanwhile, BJP MLA Ajay Vishnoi, who had earlier said that the exercise was akin to placating four at the cost of agonising another 14, also took to X to congratulate the Ministers for their “Sankshipt karyakal (brief tenure)”.
‘Shivraj signals control’
Political commentator Girija Shankar opined that the latest expansion had less to do with electoral arithmetic and more with the internal calibrations within the BJP. “By carrying out a Cabinet expansion that he has been eyeing for long, and by getting the names of his choices in Saturday’s list, the CM has shown that he remains firmly in control,” Mr. Shankar said.
