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The choice of Mohan Yadav as the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh by the BJP is being seen as a calculated move with an eye on the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. At the same time, it is yet another step towards a leadership change within the party in states where it has had an entrenched regional leadership for decades.
The BJP, which has been sweeping states in the Hindi belt for the last nine years on the basis of a committed vote base among ‘upper castes’, OBCs and sections of Dalits and tribals, had one frontier it had failed to breach – Yadavs in the Hindi belt, particularly in the most populous states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. With the elevation of Mohan Yadav to the top post in a large state, the BJP, party insiders say, has made a strong pitch to Yadavs across the Hindi belt.
A party insider said Yadav’s elevation could make a dent in the influence held by Yadav political families in the Hindi belt.
“Think of the impact it will have when Mohan Yadav campaigns in pockets with a strong Yadav presence in states like UP and Bihar, where Yadavs have largely sided with Lohiaite politics. Even if a section of Yadavs shifts to the BJP in the Lok Sabha, the impact will be huge as the BJP already has significant leads,” a party insider said. “It is not just a signal to Yadavs to support the party but also a signal that they need not support Yadav political families, like the Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal families. Even without a powerful family background, a Yadav can rise in politics.”
A leader said had the party elevated a Yadav to the top post in UP or Bihar, it could have irked sections of the ‘upper castes’ and also OBCs lower in the hierarchy and Dalits, as Yadavs have had conflicts with other groups in these states. “But the Yadavs of MP are ‘neutral’ in that sense. A signal has been sent out to Yadavs without rubbing anyone else the wrong way through Madhya Pradesh,” the party leader said.
The BJP has shown a preference for non-Yadav OBCs over the last decade, though it did field 23 Yadavs in Bihar’s 2015 Assembly polls. In 2014, too, just before the Lok Sabha polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said at a rally in Patna that ‘Yaduvanshis’ need not worry, as the party would take care of their interests.
Leading up to the 2024 general elections, the party elevated Bhupendra Yadav to the post of Union minister in 2021 and inducted Sudha Yadav into the party’s Parliamentary Board in 2022.
However, the most recent gesture in MP is the strongest signal to the community yet.
With Chhattisgarh likely to have an OBC Deputy CM and Madhya Pradesh set to have an OBC CM, the BJP is also aiming to deflate the Opposition’s caste census pitch by showing the party is walking the talk when it comes to OBC representation.
While the caste census demand appears to have not resonated on the ground in current elections, the party wants to leave nothing to chance. Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP president J P Nadda had held a high-level meeting of senior leaders in New Delhi in the first week of November to discuss the party’s strategy on the issue.
In that meeting, Madhya Pradesh was one state the party leaders assessed could see some impact of the Opposition, especially the Congress, taking away a share of voters from the BJP’s support base. They also discussed the possible impact on UP, Maharashtra and Bihar.
During these Assembly elections, the party had made a series of announcements – including promising to name an OBC CM if the party won in Telangana – and also appointed Nayab Singh Saini, an OBC leader, as the Haryana BJP president.
“Appointing an OBC leader as the CM of central Madhya Pradesh, where the party organisation is robust and has a strong ideological base, is a masterstroke against the OBC card Rahul Gandhi has been pushing,” said a BJP leader from Madhya Pradesh.
Another BJP leader said that the decision also had an organisational message.
“The party is overhauling its regional leadership, phasing out entrenched leaders and building a new line of leadership. At the same time, it wants to tell party workers who haven’t made it big that they should persevere and may be rewarded one day. The party has also sent senior leaders the signal that past achievements need not translate into continuous growth; they will be used as per the party’s designs and not as per their ambitions,” the leader said.
“This is definitely a generational change, and having been trained for the last three decades in organisational streams on various fronts, Mohan Yadav has the skill, capability and the maturity about the organisational working system. Under his leadership, the BJP will definitely consolidate objectives of social extension,” P Murlidhar Rao, senior BJP leader in charge of organisation in Madhya Pradesh, told The Indian Express.
Party leaders pointed out that the move is in line with the BJP’s ticket allotment strategy for the Assembly election in Madhya Pradesh – the BJP had fielded seven Lok Sabha MPs, of whom five won – saying that it was to ensure the party has a fresh set of leaders to contest the Lok Sabha elections. “It is in line with Prime Minister Modi’s efforts to give opportunities to new persons, bring new faces into leadership, instead of sticking to familiar faces belonging to one family or caste,” the leader said.
“This is for new energy, new hope, new development. In the new India Modi is working for, Madhya Pradesh will lead as a model. The state under the new leadership will fulfill his dreams,” BJP national secretary and newly elected MLA Kailash Vijavargiya told The Indian Express.
