Caste consensus

The new chief ministers tick all of the BJP’s boxes, but only their performance would guarantee their survival

- PRATUL SHARMA

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.