The appointment of senior Union Ministers — Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley and Thawar Chand Gehlot — as central observers to Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh by the ruling BJP, is being interpreted as manoeuvre to initiate a change of guard in the three politically crucial States where the party lost to the Congress in the recent Assembly polls.
The BJP held a meeting of its Parliamentary Board on Thursday evening where the decision was taken to appoint the Home Minister, Finance Minister and the Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment along with senior party functionaries Vinay Sahastrabudhe, Avinash Rai Khanna and Anil Jain, who were in-charge of conducting elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh respectively, as central observers.
The main issue to be addressed is whether to appoint the three former chief ministers — Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Vasundhara Raje and Raman Singh — as Leaders of Opposition (LoPs) in the three States. The buzz is they could be inducted in the central party as main strategists and campaigners for the general elections this year.
While it provides a fillip and the new faces to reinvigorate the BJP in the election year, it also simultaneously curbs intra-party feuds especially in Rajasthan, where Vasundhara Raje’s appointment as LoP will be contested by her detractors. The appointment of Jaitley, is critical in the light of this thinking.
A lot will depend on whether Chouhan, Raje and Raman Singh would like to leave the State they have nurtured for years, and how they will position their supporter MLAs to align with their respective positions. The upcoming meetings of the BJP’s Legislature Party in the three States will signify this