IN 2003, BHAJAN Lal Sharma rebelled against his party, the BJP, and contested from Rajasthan’s Nadbai assembly constituency as a candidate of the newly floated Samajik Nyay Manch, a party dedicated to the welfare of upper castes. He got less than 6,000 votes and returned to the BJP. It was a humbling experience for the young leader. Two decades of dedicated organisational work later, he is now the Rajasthan chief minister―the first Brahmin to hold the post in more than 30 years.
As a BJP general secretary, it was Sharma who had sent out the invite to the party’s central team of observers, led by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, to come to Jaipur. Long ago, Singh, as BJP president, had the tough task of getting the party to agree on Narendra Modi as its prime minister candidate. He now had a similar task at hand. He had to persuade former chief minister Vasundhara Raje to step aside for a new face. And as Raje came to know of the choice through a paper slip, a moment caught on camera, it marked a new beginning in the BJP’s politics.
In picking its three chief ministers for Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the party followed a few conventions and broke others. Apart from Sharma, a first-time MLA, the BJP picked three-time MLA Mohan Yadav, an OBC leader, in Madhya Pradesh, and Vishnu Deo Sai, a four-time MP from the tribal community, in Chhattisgarh.
The method to picking these men can be understood in four Cs―caste, cadre, culture and convention. With an eye on the 2024 Lok Sabha election and keeping in mind the opposition demand for a caste census, the BJP kept local caste equations in mind while choosing the men and their deputies, two each.
The Brahmin community, which despite voting for the BJP has rarely got the top roles, found two of its men―Rajendra Shukla (Madhya Pradesh) and Vijay Sharma (Chhattisgarh)―elevated to the post of deputy chief minister. Rajasthan now has a Brahmin chief minister and BJP state president, besides governor.
The dalits, too, got two deputy chief ministers―Jagdish Devda in Madhya Pradesh and Prem Chand Bairwa in Rajasthan. The other deputy chief minister in Rajasthan, Diya Kumari, comes from the Jaipur royal family and the dominant Rajput community. In Chhattisgarh, Arun Sao, an OBC leader, fills in the second deputy chief minister slot; former Congress chief minister Bhupesh Baghel was also from the community.
As is Mohan Yadav. And as is the BJP’s convention. Its previous picks in Madhya Pradesh―Uma Bharti, Babulal Gaur and Shivraj Singh Chouhan―were all from the OBC community.
However, picking a Yadav sends out another important message, especially to voters in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where the BJP’s principal opponents are Yadavs―Akhilesh and Tejashwi, of the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal. The BJP had tried wooing the non-Yadav OBCs in these states, but with limited success. Yadavs make up 19 per cent of the population in Uttar Pradesh, 14 per cent in Bihar and 16 per cent in Haryana. Mohan Yadav’s wife is from Uttar Pradesh’s Sultanpur, which gives the BJP a new star campaigner in the state’s son-in-law.
In Chhattisgarh, though, the BJP broke convention by making a tribal the chief minister for the first time. The BJP won all 14 seats in the tribal-dominated Surguja district and eight of 12 in Bastar.
The choice of Sai is expected to be the BJP’s selling point in the assembly and Lok Sabha elections in Odisha and Jharkhand. Having a tribal chief minister, in addition to the fact that the Indian president is also from the community, would benefit the BJP in the 47 Lok Sabha seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes across several states.
Within the party, the biggest message has been that the ordinary party worker can rise to the top. As the BJP draws its cadre from the grassroots and the youth, it has rewarded those who have started from the bottom. Sharma started as a panch (member of panchayat) and then village sarpanch in Bharatpur district. Sai was a panch in Jashpur district. Yadav cut his teeth as an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad leader in Ujjain’s Madhav Science College.
The three chief ministers are known to follow party diktats. Sai was denied a ticket in 2019 and was removed as state party president in 2022. But, he did not protest; the top leadership took note of this. When Amit Shah campaigned for Sai this time, he told the people of Kunkuri that the party would make him a big man.
“The BJP is a big party,” said its national spokesperson Gopal Krishna Agarwal. “There are a lot of people who have been working behind the scenes for long. They have put in a lot of effort to bring the party up. To strengthen the party, different people have to be given different responsibilities. The message is that the party cares for everyone that works for it.”
It also helps that the three men are poster boys for hindutva. While Sai has worked in the tribal areas against religious conversion, Sharma was part of the Ram Temple movement and had courted arrest. Yadav, a wrestler from the holy land of Ujjain, has the image of a hindutva strongman. Along with Modi from Varanasi, Yadav would be a hindutva model for the electorate. Also, as state education minister, he had pushed for the inclusion of the Gita and the Ramayan in the school curriculum.
Interestingly, owing to local traditions, Yadav might not be able to stay in his hometown―Lord Shiva is considered the king of Ujjain and no other ruler can stay there. Apparently, any chief minister who spends the night in Ujjain will lose his chair, or so the belief goes. Yadav, however, has grown up with this belief and would know how to deal with his predicament.
The Ram Temple will be inaugurated in January and the BJP in its manifesto has promised to organise free trips to Ayodhya. Having three hindutva-forward leaders at such a time would only help.
The BJP has firmly implemented what is humorously called its ‘VRS’ plan: sidelining Vasundhara, Raman (Singh) and Shivraj Singh (Chouhan). The generational change means the BJP is focused on creating a new crop of leaders who could guide the party’s politics in coming decades. While Raman Singh would continue in Chhattisgarh as speaker, Chouhan and Raje might be deployed in national politics; the Lok Sabha elections are in a few months. The message for the old-timers is that they have to reorient to stay relevant.
In September 2013, when Modi was made the BJP’s campaign committee chief, thus clearing his path to be the party’s prime minister candidate, he was the longest-serving BJP chief minister. This made him a natural choice. He pipped party patriarch L.K. Advani to the post as he had already won three elections in a row and was a mass leader. Were Chouhan to continue as chief minister, he would have been in the chair for 22 years by the time 2029 rolled around and a contender within the BJP for prime ministership. Raman Singh was chief minister for 20 years and Raje for 15.
“The party looks into the aspirations, the requirements and communication from the ground,” said Agarwal. “Who gets support from the MLAs plays an important part. There is no issue of entitlement. It is a people’s party and their support and love are taken into consideration while deciding on who will lead the party.”
With the three new faces, the average age of the 12 BJP chief ministers has dropped―all three are under 60. The Modi-Shah duo has shown that no chief minister’s post is permanent. They have not shied away from changing chief ministers to counter anti-incumbency. Gujarat has seen three chief ministers since Modi, and Uttarakhand has had three in the past seven years.
The BJP might have given a chance to new leaders this time, but only their performance will guarantee their survival. They would also need to keep the public sentiment pro-BJP in the run-up to the 2024 election. The prime minister had given the electorate his ‘Modi Guarantee’ while campaigning in these state elections. The three chief ministers have to fulfil that guarantee. Said a party leader: “Those who perform well on this count will go far.”