The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) efforts to effect a generational shift by introducing three new faces as chief ministers in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh this week also meticulously balanced caste considerations as part of its heartland political strategy ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The party picked new faces in all three heartland states where it won impressive victories earlier this year but was careful to cater to major caste groups by appointing deputy chief ministers. This, analysts said, could help the party hold on to the rainbow Hindu coalition across castes that it built on its way to its second term in 2019.
The party’s impressive victories in these states had given way to frenzied speculation about the top jobs. This week, as the veil of suspense lifted from the BJP’s internal deliberations, it revealed a delicately crafted social engineering strategy that attempted to reach out to key communities – tribals, backwards, upper-castes and Dalits. This is a region where the party was already strong in 2019, having won 62 out of the 65 seats in the three provinces. But the renewed push could help the party beyond the heartland, and deepen its support base in these communities in next summer’s general elections.
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{{/usCountry}}In Chhattisgarh, a state where the Congress squandered a landslide mandate from five years ago, the party picked a senior tribal leader, Vishnu Deo Sai, to be CM. Tribespeople had backed the party in large numbers – of the 29 reserved seats for Scheduled Tribes, the BJP won 17, up from the three it won in 2018. Tribals account for around a third of the state’s population, and Sai is from the Kanwar tribe, the second largest grouping after the Gonds.
“After the Congress pushed the OBC narrative, the BJP wants to ensure that the tribals know that they are a party that represents them with the Lok Sabha elections, and other state elections like Jharkhand in mind. This is the second biggest appointment after the nomination of Droupadi Murmu as President of India,” a senior BJP leader had said. The Lok Sabha has 47 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes, a community that the party has aggressively courted over the past year, in much the same way it wooed Dalits ahead of the 2019 elections.
Two other deputy chief ministers are also likely to be named, said people aware of developments. One of them is likely to be senior leader and state unit chief Arun Sao, who hails from the dominant other backward classes (OBC) group, Sahus – a bellwether community that supported the Congress in 2018 only to swing back to the BJP this time.
The caste contours were equally visible in the party’s choices for Madhya Pradesh. Though it chose to replace four-time chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the BJP picked another prominent OBC leader, Mohan Yadav, as his replacement. With his appointment, the party ensured that its grip over OBCs – who not only form the largest chunk of the electorate in Madhya Pradesh but also the spine of the BJP’s national electoral coalition – remains intact.
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Further, by choosing a nominee from the Yadav community (which is dominant in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar but not to the same extent in Madhya Pradesh), the BJP opened the doors towards making inroads into the community in the neighbouring states.
Its choice of deputy CMs – Dalit face and senior minister Jagdish Devda and Brahmin face and outgoing public relations minister Rajendra Shukla – showed that the party was equally aware of its other key constituents. In its incumbency defying victory last week, the party won 26 of the 35 seats reserved for scheduled castes, up from 18 in 2018.
BJP spokesperson Rajneesh Agrawal said, “The decision of nominating chief minister and deputy chief ministers has been taken by considering many things like representation of region, ability to achieve goals, leadership quality, future aspects and others not only caste. It is wrong to say that the party gave preference to only one caste factor.”
And when the announcement in Rajasthan came on Tuesday, it closed the circle on its caste strategy by focussing on its strongest vote bank – upper castes. First-time lawmaker Bhajan Lal Sharma was named the CM. But the party, which seemed to move past two-time CM Vasundhara Raje, was conscious to nominate another member of the royal family, Diya Kumari, as deputy CM in an outreach to the dominant Rajput community. And, in a state where the party won 22 of the 34 seats reserved for scheduled castes, the other deputy CM came from the community, in the form of senior leader Prem Chand Bairwa.