Shivraj Singh Chouhan likely to take oath as Madhya Pradesh CM today: Report

Mangalore Today News Network

Bhopal, Mar 23, 2020: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan is likely to take oath as Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister on Monday evening, reported news agency ANI.

 

A legislature party meeting is scheduled for 6 pm today, in which Chouhan is likely to be elected as the party’s chief ministerial candidate, reported ANI.

If he takes the oath today, this will be Chouhan’s record fourth term as chief minister.

The BJP legislature party is meeting today, after the fall of the Congress government on Friday afternoon when Kamal Nath resigned barely two hours before the floor test he was supposed to face in the state assembly as per the Supreme Court verdict.

During the political crisis the Congress faced in the state, Chouhan took the lead and continued to attack the government. It was he who filed the petition in the Supreme Court last Monday along with nine other MLAs seeking directions to issue an order to the Speaker of the state assembly to conduct a floor test.

Gopal Bhargava, Leader of the Opposition in Madhya Pradesh, is one of the aspirants for the chief minister’s post. The names of Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar and Thaverchand Gehlot, Narottam Mishra, the chief whip of the legislature party, and Kailash Vijayvargiya, the BJP national vice-president, are doing the rounds.

Chouhan delivered some of the highest growth rates and Madhya Pradesh saw a boom in production. He positioned himself as ‘Mamaji’, a benevolent, paternal figure looking out for citizens, especially the women and the young. He also delivered a range welfare schemes to different social groups.

All of this helped Chouhan construct a wide social coalition of upper castes, who had traditionally been with the party, Other Backward Classes (OBC) to which Chouhan himself belongs and segments of Dalits and tribals. This helped him win in 2008 and 2013 elections.