Split, wide open

BJP leaders turning against Chief Minister Chouhan.

- Deepak Tiwari

The fault lines within the Bharatiya Janata Party have come to the fore in Madhya Pradesh, where it has been in power for 13 years. Several of its senior leaders have criticised the government, led by the BJP’s blue-eyed boy Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

Chouhan, who has been the chief minister of the state for the past 11 years, is facing open dissent from a few of his ministers and senior party leaders. Leading the attack is Kailash Vijayvargiya, the BJP’s national general secretary. He has been periodically criticising Chouhan on Twitter, and off it. During a recent function organised by a spiritual organisation,Vijayvargiya said, “Waiving electricity bills is not a decision in public interest; it is a populist one. Weak leaders normally resort to such populist decisions.”

The split between the two camps— pro-Chouhan and anti-Chouhan—is wide open, and such remarks have sent shock waves within the BJP and the RSS, which doesn’t welcome open criticism.

Vijayvargiya had earlier charged the government with being corrupt, too. In an interview with a television channel, he had said, “We have been in power for a long time and certain ills do creep in. But slowly they are becoming too apparent…. If we do not correct them, we may find it difficult in the next elections.” Though corruption had always been there, he said, it was well under control in the first two terms of the BJP rule. “However, it is now rampant, especially at a lower level. The bureaucracy does not care for party workers,” he said.