CONVERGING INTERESTS

On August 26, three new ministers were inducted in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan cabinet in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh. Two of them, Rajendra Shukla and Gauri Shankar Bisen, are senior MLAs, former ministers and Shivraj loyalists, so their new cabinet posts caused no surprise.

- Rahul Noronha

However, behind the inclusion of the third-Khargapur MLA Rahul Singh Lodhi, who was sworn in as a minister of state-political observers detect the BJP's caste compulsions before the polls as well as a growing entente between the current chief minister and his one-time predecessor and senior BJP leader Uma Bharti. Lodhi happens to be Bharti's nephew.

Shivraj and Bharti have been bitter rivals in the past. In 2003, as the BJP's chief ministerial candidate, Bharti won a landslide in Madhya Pradesh, ending 10 years of Congress rule. She resigned in 2004 in a national flag dishonour case and was replaced by Babulal Gaur, who in turn made way for Shivraj in late 2005. Shivraj's appointment and firm backing by the high command was a blow to Bharti, who had planned a comeback. Shivraj soon found her to be an implacable critic perennially seeking his ouster. Expelled from the BJP in 2006 due to 'indiscipline, Bharti formed the Bharatiya Jan Shakti Party, but eventually merged it with the BJP in 2011. Bharti contested and won in the 2012 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, later became Union minister in the NDA government (2014-2019), and took a break from politics in 2020.