Bimaru no more: Shah lauds MP's governance

Union home minister Amit Shah on Sunday said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s development work helped pull Madhya Pradesh out of the “Bimaru” states list, which was a “legacy” of the Congress regime.

- Shruti Tomar

 

Speaking at a press conference in Bhopal to release the MP government’s 20-year report card, the senior BJP leader also hinted that the chief ministerial face for the upcoming state polls was still undecided.

“Shivraj ji is the chief minister. Why should you do the job of the party [of deciding the CM face]? It’s our job and we will decide,” Shah told reporters when asked if Chouhan would return as CM if the party retains power.

“At present Shivraj ji is the CM and we are in elections,” he added.

The state is set to go to the polls in November.

To be sure, in the states where it is in power, the BJP traditionally considers its incumbent CM the front-runner for the post if it retains power.

At the press conference, Shah said the BJP that the state on “the path of development”.

“Madhya Pradesh came into existence in 1956 and since then, except for five or six years, the Congress ruled the state till 2003. But the state remained Bimaru during their regime. However, the BJP government has successfully brought the state out of the Bimaru tag and put it on the path of development by implementing various welfare schemes,” Shah said.

The Bimaru acronym has often been used to refer to Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh and imply that these states lagged in terms of economic growth, health care, education, and other developmental indices.

In 2003, voters in the state decided to remove “Mr Bantadhar’s” government, Shah said in an apparent reference to Congress leader and former chief minister Digvijaya Singh.