A large new state of Madhya Pradesh was created in the heart of India in 1956 with the merger of five different regions — Central Provinces and Berar with its capital in Nagpur; Madhya Bharat, which included the prominent princely states of Gwalior and Indore; Vindhya Pradesh, which comprised Bundelkhand and Baghelkhand; the princely state of Bhopal; and the Sironj tehsil of south-eastern Rajasthan's Kota district (which is currently part of Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh). In its report, the States Reorganisation Commission argued for a “compact, strong and prosperous unit in Central India”. The Congress leader Ravishankar Shukla, who belonged to Raipur, became the first Chief Minister of the new state, with its capital at Bhopal. After Chhattisgarh was hived off as a separate state in 2000, the Madhya Pradesh of today came into existence. It has a unicameral legislature of 230 seats, and 29 Lok Sabha and 11 Rajya Sabha seats. Strong Cong, emerging BJS Chief Minister Ravishankar Shukla passed away in Delhi on December 31, 1956. He was in the capital to meet the Congress leadership ahead of the Assembly elections of 1957, and was apparently told that he would not get a party ticket. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru is said to have been annoyed with the political activities of four of Shukla's six sons. At the AICC session in Indore from January 6-8, 1957, the name of Nehru's Defence Minister Kailash Nath Katju was floated for the CM's post. Katju took charge in Bhopal on January 31. Though the Congress dominated, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), precursor of the BJP, was active in the state from the beginning. The RSS ideologue Dattopant Thengdi was among the early pracharaks deployed in the BJS in Madhya Pradesh. A CM loses, Cong falls short The Congress suffered a setback in the Assembly polls of 1962. Amid increasing differences between the government and the state Congress organisation under Moolchand Deshlehra, Chief Minister Katju lost in Jaora to the young BJS candidate Lakshmi Narayan Pandey. The Congress won only 142 seats, falling short of a majority in the 288-member House. Deshlehra was forced to resign. While Katju entered the Assembly after another MLA gave up his seat for him, the CM's post went to Bhagwant Rao Mandloi, an educationist from Khandwa. But in 1963, under the Kamaraj Plan — a suggestion by K Kamaraj that all senior Congress leaders give up their ministerial posts and devote their energies to the organisation — Mandloi was asked to resign. He was succeeded in the post by the veteran leader D P Mishra, head of an old political family and a good friend of the first CM, Ravishankar Shukla. Mishra was the father of IFS officer Brajesh Mishra, who played a very important role in the government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. 1967: first non-Cong Govt In the years that followed, Mishra — a man who had once left the Congress following differences with Nehru — grew increasingly close to Indira Gandhi. Indira had become PM in 1966, and Mishra was among those who had helped her fight off the challenge from the party old guard. Meanwhile, the BJS was becoming stronger, and some socialists and erstwhile royalty like Gwalior’s Vijayaraje Scindia — who had serious differences with Mishra — had joined the party. The Congress survived the opposition wave of 1967 — when non-Congress governments were formed in more than a dozen other states — but the BJS won 78 of the 296 seats in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly. D P Mishra continued as CM, but in July 1967, four months after the election results were declared, the Congress split. Govind Narain Singh, who had been left out of Mishra's ministry, broke away with his faction of MLAs, and became Chief Minister of the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal (SVD) government, the first non-Congress government in Madhya Pradesh. Govind Narain Singh, however, lasted less than two years in the post — he was succeeded by Naresh Chandra Singh, who belonged to a tribal dynasty from the Chhattisgarh region. Govts during Emergency The first tribal Chief Minister ruled for less than two weeks. Shyama Charan Shukla, the son of the first Chief Minister, was eying the chair, and many SVD MLAs who had left the Congress with Govind Narain Singh, were looking to return. The Congress returned to power in the state, with Shukla as CM. After the 1972 Assembly elections, Indira picked Prakash Chandra Sethi, the MLA from Ujjain, over Shukla to be CM. Meanwhile, Sanjay Gandhi was becoming an increasingly powerful figure in Delhi. Sethi had an uneasy relationship with Sanjay and, months after the proclamation of the Emergency in June 1975, he was replaced by Shukla, one of Sanjay's favourite henchmen. Something similar took place in Uttar Pradesh as well, where H N Bahuguna was replaced by N D Tiwari. Shyama Charan Shukla was one of the few Indian CMs whose fathers too occupied the post — some other examples being Biju and Naveen Patnaik, Devi Lal and Om Prakash Chautala, Mulayam Singh and Akhilesh Yadav, H D Deve Gowda and H D Kumaraswamy, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, and M Karunanidhi and M K Stalin. In the post-Emergency election of 1977, the Congress was reduced to 84 seats in the 320-member House. But the Janata Party government faced the same fate as the SVD government from a decade earlier. The state had three CMs — Kailash Chandra Joshi, Virendra Kumar Saklecha, and Sundarlal Patwa — in less than three years, and the SVD government was dismissed soon after Indira returned as Prime Minister in January 1980. Arjun Singh & Motilal Vora In the Assembly elections of 1980, the Congress won 246 of the 320 seats. The BJS had reinvented itself as the BJP, and the new party won 60 seats. Along with Rajiv Gandhi, who had become active in politics after Sanjay's death, Indira chose Arjun Singh, the MLA from Churhat in Sidhi district, to be Chief Minister. From 1980 to 1989, Madhya Pradesh had five Congress Chief Ministers — Arjun Singh and Motilal Vora occupied the post twice each before Shyama Charan Shukla came back as CM for a short third stint. Arjun Singh and Vora remained active in central politics until their deaths. Singh was among the most secular faces of the Congress and, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's HRD Minister, he was instrumental in implementing 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in educational institutions. 1990: BJP forms its first Govt Assembly elections were held in early 1990. The Congress lost — like in UP a few months previously. The BJP got a historic mandate, winning 220 of the 320 seats, and Sundarlal Patwa became CM. The BJP also formed governments of its own in UP (Kalyan Singh), Rajasthan (Bhairon Singh Shekhawat), and Himachal Pradesh (Shanta Kumar). All four governments were dismissed by Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao after the Babri Masjid was demolished in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. A decade of Digvijaya Singh In the elections of 1993, the BJP was reduced to 117 seats. With Arjun Singh a Minister in the Rao government and Vora a Governor, the position of CM in Bhopal went to Digvijaya Singh of the erstwhile royal family of Raghogarh. Digvijaya remained in power for two full terms until 2003 — by then, Arjun Singh had quit the Congress, and the NDA government under Vajpayee had split Madhya Pradesh into two. By the end of its 10 years, Digvijaya's government was highly unpopular. Uma Bharti, Shivraj Singh Chouhan In 2003, the BJP could not quite capitalise on the huge anti-incumbency against Digvijaya Singh's Congress government. Uma Bharti, Minister in Vajpayee's government, contested the election, and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, MP from Vidisha, the seat once represented by Vajpayee, was fielded against Digvijaya. The BJP won a majority of 173 seats in the 230-member post-Chhattisgarh Assembly, and the Congress was reduced to just 38 seats, even though Digvijaya himself managed to win. Uma Bharti, who had shot to prominence during the Ramjanmabhoomi movement, became CM. However, an old case forced Bharti to give up the post in August 2004. Leaders of the central BJP had wanted her to hand the baton to Chouhan, but she agreed only to the septuagenarian Babulal Gaur. In a little more than a year, however, with the tussle among the second-rung leadership of the BJP at its peak, Gaur was made to resign, and Chouhan took oath as CM. Bharti took all of this very badly, and over the next decade, she was expelled from the party and taken back twice. Chouhan went on to serve continuously from 2005 to 2018. Since 2018; looking at 2023 In the tight election of 2018, the Congress won 114 seats, and the BJP 109. The year after he lost in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Jyotiraditya Scindia left the party his father, Madhavrao Scindia, had served, and subsequently joined the party that his grandmother, Vijayaraje, had co-founded. This brought down the Congress government of Kamal Nath, and Chouhan returned as CM in March 2020. Veterans Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh, calling themselves Jai-Veeru after the iconic duo from Sholay, are now locked in a high-stakes battle against the BJP led by Chouhan. The Congress expects to do well, and hopes the 2023 Assembly election will provide positive indications for the Lok Sabha battle of 2024. Watch Video-
