In the last three days, the BJP has sprung three big surprises across Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The party not only did elect CM faces having low probability and different castes but also announced six deputy chief ministers from varied backgrounds to set its cast equations right. This is BJP's social engineering at work.
If we start from Chhattisgarh, the state now has a tribal (ST) leader as Chief Minister in Vishnu Deo Sai. Chhattisgarh has a 32 per cent tribal population which accounts for around 7.5% of the country's total tribal population. Sai hails from the Sahu (Teli) community which has a sizable presence in the Durg, Raipur and Bilaspur divisions. The party also made Arun Sao and Vijay Sharma Deputy Chief Ministers. Sao is an OBC leader while Sharma is a Brahmin. On the other hand, Raman Singh has been made speaker to keep the party's Rajput votes intact.
Then there comes Madhya Pradesh. Here party elected OBC leader Mohan Yadav as the Chief Minister and Jagdish Devda & Rajendra Shukla as the Deputy Chief Ministers. Devda belongs to the SC community, and Shukla is a Brahmin leader. On the other hand, Speaker-designate Narendra Singh Tomar hails from a Rajput family.
In Rajasthan, BJP made first time MLA and a Brahmin leader Bhajan Lal Sharma Chief Minister of the state. Former Lok Sabha MP Diya Kumari is one of the two Deputy Chief Ministers. A member of the former Jaipur royal family, Diya Kumari is a Brahmin face and a woman leader. The other deputy CM is Prem Chand Bairwa, a member of the Dalit community.
The CM and Deputy CM choices in the three states also reflect the sentiments of their population and they have been rightly given apt representations through these leaders,
Dalits make up over 16 per cent of India's population, OBCs around 45 per cent and Brahmins and Rajputs around 10 per cent together. This way, the BJP has tried to woo around 71 per cent of the voters ahead of the crucial 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Now it will be important to see whether Narendra Modi-Amit Shah's masterplan makes the 2024 elections a cakewalk for the BJP or not.
On the other hand, the Congress which is yet to recover from the shocking poll losses in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh has some serious works at its disposal - bringing the India alliance on the same platform by selecting a neutral leader as convenor and finalising the crucial seat-sharing formula for the Lok Sabha elections which is just five months away. If the party manages to finalise a seat-sharing formula well before time, it might get an edge against the BJP in the contest.
