Posts Tagged ‘Ajay Singh’
The people’s disenchantment with the BJP government of 15 years in Madhya Pradesh is much too obvious. The party MLAs and ministers face people’s anger whenever they go to their constituencies. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan abruptly abandoned his Jan Ashirvad Yatra much before the scheduled day of conclusion because the people had lost interest and stopped joining it. A change appears to be on the cards. But, will it take place? Polling in the State takes place on November 28.
Madhya Pradesh has essentially been a two-party State. It has been either the Congress or the BJP, a few regional parties like BSP or SP or GGP (Gondwana Ganatantra Party), occasionally playing a peripheral role. This time, though, the poll scene has been blurred by a plethora of local parties or outfits displaying interest in the elections. BSP and SP, too, have announced their decision to put forward their candidates in almost all the constituencies instead of confining themselves to the areas where they have strong presence. The two parties are in a positon to upset the outcome in several constituencies unless there is a wave-like condition in favour of one party or the other.
A major issue worrying both the main parties, BJP in particular as it is the ruling party in the State and at the Centre, is the anger of the Sapaks against the amendment in the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act to nullify the Supreme Court judgement which had disallowed arrest of the accused under the provisions of the Act without investigation. Sapaks is an organisation of State government employees belonging to the general, OBC and minority categories. It had come into existence to protest against the State government’s decision to allow reservation in promotion for SCs and STs and restoration of the stringent provisions of the Act. Sapaks activists have for some time been holding black flag demonstrations against Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his ministers as well as other BJP leaders. Even Congress leaders, PCC chief Kamal Nath and Campaign Committee chairman Jyotiraditya Scindia, had to face their ire for supporting the amendment in Parliament.
GGP is confined to the tribal regions of Mahakoshal. Another tribal outfit, jai Adivasi Yuva Shakti or JAYS has sprung up in the tribal-dominated Malwa-Nimar region. Though recently formed, JAYS has already alarmed both the BJP and the Congress. There are 47 seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes in the 230-seat Madhya Pradesh Assembly and the two tribal parties expect to make a good show on these seats. To everyone’s surprise, Bihar-based Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) has announced its intention to contest on 66 seats in Madhya Pradesh where it was never known to have had any interest. Away from the media attention, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has for several months been campaigning in the rural areas, particularly among the farmers and tribals. Its State unit is headed by Alok Agrawal, who has for decades been fighting for the rights of the tribals affected by Sardar Sarovar Dam and other Narmada projects in the Malwa-Nimar region. Party president Arvind Kejriwal has announced him as the Chief Minister if AAP comes to power.
The real contest, at least on the ground, appears to be between the two traditional rivals, the Congress and the BJP. Congress has almost taken it for granted that the people have this time made up their mind to oust the BJP and give their mandate to the Congress to form the government. For the present, it is engaged in its favourite game of infighting, with at least four aspirants for the post of Chief Minister. They are PCC chief Kamal Nath, Campaign Committee chairman Jyotiraditya Scindia (both MPs), Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Ajay Singh and former PCC chief Suresh Pachouri.
What former Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh is up to is anybody’s guess. He undertook a six-month Narmada parikrama and was expecting to impress the party high command which did not happen. He had announced towards the close of his parikrama that he had collected a lot of material (photos and videos) about the Chouhan government’s corruption but he has not made any use of that material, though it is more than six months that his parikrama had concluded. He had tried to project his wife Amrita Rai as a party candidate either for Assembly or Lok Sabha next year but his plan is reported to have been vetoed by the high command. He recently told his supporters that he would not campaign for the party nor would address any rallies because his speeches damaged the Congress prospects. Then there are reports that he clashed with Jyotiraditya Scindia on the selection of candidates at a Central Election Committee meeting presided over by party president Rahul Gandhi.
BJP is the only party which has been systematically going through poll preparations for several months. Party president Amit Shah is constantly moving around the poll-bound States including Madhya Pradesh, addressing rallies and interacting with party leaders and workers to get the feedback and give them directions. It has rented an entire hotel on Hoshangabad Road and set up its high-tech war room there to monitor and organise poll campaign.
During his first term as Leader of Opposition in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly (2010-2013), Ajay Singh (Rahul Bhaiya) had made a name for himself for his aggressive stance against the wrong-doings of the BJP government of Shivraj Singh Chouhan. But in his second tenure, which began in February this year, not only his performance has been lack-lustre but this month he did something which will haunt his political career for the rest of his life. He collaborated in Chouhan’s clandestine move to get his own man appointed as Lokayukta of the State.
It was kept a closely guarded secret, known only to Chouhan, a few others involved, and Ajay Singh till an official announcement was made late in the night that former MP High Court judge Naresh Kumar Gupta had been appointed as the Lokayukta. Gujarat Governor O P Kohli, who has been holding additional charge of Madhya Pradesh for over a year, was flown in from Gandhinagar next day (October 18). He administered oath of office and secrecy to the new Lokayukta and flew back to Gandhinagar, barely spending a couple of hours in the Madhya Pradesh capital.
The law, rules and procedures were breached in appointment of Justice (Retd) Gupta as the Lokayukta. No panel of names was prepared and no meeting of selectors was held. Chouhan got a single name approved by the High Court Chief Justice and sent an officer to Ajay Singh to get his signature which the 62-year-old Congress leader obliged — all in secrecy. Appointment of Gupta as Lokayukta created another anomaly. Deputy Lokayukta Justice (Retd) U C Maheshwari had been acting as Lokayukta for over a year. Maheshwari was senior to Gupta by six years in the High Court and now Gupta has come to boss over him. A sullen Maheshwari did not attend Gupta’s swearing-in. A day before, he pushed off to Mhow to celebrate Diwali with his family.
Justice (Retd) Gupta was legal advisor to the Chouhan government before he was appointed a High Court judge in 2010. During that period he was said to have helped Chouhan manage some serious scams and had won the trust of Chouhan. According to PCC spokesman K K Mishra, Deputy Lokayukta Maheshwari was probing corruption charges against an influential IAS officer and now the investigation would naturally be taken over by Gupta as Maheshwari’s boss.
Ajay Singh has been receiving a lot of criticism, mainly from his own party men, for his complicity in Chouhan’s nefarious game. Congress Rajya Sabha member and senior lawyer Vivek Tankha wondered how the Chief Justice of the High Court and Leader of Opposition could become party to serious transgression of judicial procedures. Former Speaker of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly Srinivas Tiwari and several other party leaders felt that Ajay Singh had forfeited the right to lead the Congress party in the Assembly. There are reports that a large number of missives have been sent to the party high command in Delhi about the unseemly conduct of Ajay Singh.
In a facile statement, Ajay Singh said that he did not know anything about gradation of High Court judges; the Chief Justice suggested the name, the Chief Minister sent it to him and he signed. How innocent! Even ninnies would not take his defence seriously.
Deputy Leader of Opposition Bala Bachan, who was acting Leader of Opposition before Ajay Singh was nominated to the post, came out with an observation that Chouhan had been trying to get Justice (Retd) Gupta appointed as Lokayukta for nearly a year; he had sent the officers from the CMO with Gupta’s name to Bala Bachan as many as six times and every time Bala Bachan returned them saying that he would not sign for a single name. Bachan had always insisted on a panel of three names to select from, as per the rules. When Bachan asked for the file so that he could note down his objections, the officers refused to give him the file, Bachan added.
Scindia is front-runner
Posted on: July 26, 2017
Though there is no word from the Congress High Command as yet, the buzz in Madhya Pradesh is that Jyotiraditya Scindia will be the party’s face in next year’s Assembly elections. Member of Lok Sabha from Guna constituency, Scindia has increased his visits to the State. In the aftermath of the police firing on farmers in Mandsaur district in early June, Scindia held a three-day Satyagraha in Bhopal. Most of the State party leaders, including AICC General Secretary and former Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh, attended it. Later Scindia held a one-day demonstration at Khalghat in Khargone district on the farmers’ issue. Veteran Congress leader Kamal Nath, who did not come to Bhopal, attended it there. Scindia has since held several programmes in the State to highlight the travails of the people in the BJP government of Shivraj Singh Chouhan, with main emphasis on the plight of the farmers in the State.
Appearances apart, the disquiet among Congress chieftains of the State at the emergence of Scindia as the possible chief ministerial candidate is much too palpable. Some time back, Kamal Nath had started attacking the Chouhan government with unusual regularity following media reports that he was soon going to be named as the PCC chief in place of Arun Yadav and was going to be the chief ministerial candidate. After Scindia’s name started doing the rounds, Kamal Nath’s belligerency has waned. Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Ajay Singh is not seen in the current (monsoon) session of the Assembly in the same ebullient form which he displayed the last time as the Leader of Opposition. He was himself aspiring to lead the party in the elections.
Digvijaya Singh is a case apart. Once he had seen in Ajay Singh the next Chief Minister. At another time at a party function at Chhindwara, he had favoured Kamal Nath. Chhindwara is Kamal Nath’s Lok Sabha constituency. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that he does not like Scindia, nor, for that matter, did he like Scindia’s father, late Madhavrao Scindia. In fact, the only Scindia he liked was Madhavrao’s late mother Vijayaraje Scindia. Vijayaraje, one of the seniormost BJP leaders, fully reciprocated Digvijaya Singh’s sentiments and often praised the Congress leader publicly, to utter chagrin of the late BJP leader Sunderlal Patwa.
At the farmers’ rally organised by Jyotiraditya in Lahar in Bhind district early this month, Digvijaya Singh left the party workers aghast when towards the close of his speech, he looked at Scindia and said: ‘go and fight BJP and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, NOT ME.’
Digvijaya Singh has reiterated that he is not interested in Madhya Pradesh politics. He will now undertake spiritual parikrama of river Narmada from October 1. It may take several months to go round the river on foot.
Interestingly, Rubina Sharma Singh, wife of Digvijaya Singh’s younger brother Lakshman Singh, has pleaded for Scindia. In a Facebook post she says: ‘Jyotiraditya Scindia is making a great effort to resurrect the Congress Party here in Madhya Pradesh. Now, the rest of the Party leaders need to genuinely support him and stop this ego tussle they have with him.’ A similar appeal was made by Digvijaya Singh’s son Jaivardhan Singh (who is Congress MLA) at Scindia’s Bhopal Satyagraha in early June.
The BJP leaders, too, have concentrated their attacks on Scindia. To which level they can go to malign Scindia is shown by an incident. A trauma centre was to be inaugurated by Scindia in Ashoknagar in his Lok Sabha constituency where local BJP MLA Gopinath Jatav, a Dalit, was also invited. Jatav, however, pre-empted it and inaugurated it a day earlier. Congress leader and Scindia’s representative Amit Tavre promptly issued a statement that the trauma centre had been contaminated by the touch of a Dalit and would be washed with gangajal. The Congress leaders were stunned by this unauthorised statement. District Congress Committee president Gajram Singh Yadav promptly expelled Tavre from the party for six years. Scindia removed him from the responsibilities of his representative.
BJP leaders denounced Scindia’s feudal attitude and his prejudice against Dalits. On a directive from State BJP president Nand Kumar Singh Chauhan, the BJP workers burnt effigies of Scindia at district headquarters all over the State on July 24.
Congress gasping for fresh air!
Posted on: June 30, 2016
The mother-son duo may now consider leasing out State Congress units to the highest bidders for specified periods, with the understandable clauses incorporated in the agreement, such as, no criticism, in any form, of mother and son will be permitted, full weightage will be given to the advice of the ‘controlling authority’ (meaning high command in Delhi) in the selection of candidates for Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, certain quotas will be fixed for the high command in the selection of candidates for Assemblies, and so on. This will bring, on a regular basis, good amounts of funds to the coffers in AICC. More importantly, it will check waywardness presently witnessed in State Congress units all over the country. In any case, the State party bosses are running the organisation as if it has been leased out to them with the minus point that others in the State do not accept it.
It’s now ages that one has seen a State unit of the grand old party working in cohesion anywhere in the country, or the high command taking any firm steps to ensure at least a semblance of unity in the party. Not infrequently, the high command has shown utter unconcern for the workings in the State units. Take, for instance, the matter of Leader of Opposition in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly. The rules prescribe that a meeting of the party MLAs will be convened specifically for the election of the Leader. A formal resolution will be adopted for the purpose. Election may be unanimously or by a majority vote. The copy of the resolution will be communicated to the Speaker of the Assembly in a prescribed manner. The Speaker announces his approval in the Assembly. Then only he/she becomes Leader of Opposition.
In Madhya Pradesh, an observer of AICC or the AICC general secretary in charge of Madhya Pradesh gets signatures of party MLAs on a single-line resolution authorising Sonia Gandhi to name the Leader. The general secretary in-charge then gets the signature of Sonia Gandhi and a copy of that is sent to the Speaker somehow and the Speaker promptly gives his approval. This happened in the last Assembly when Ajay Singh (Rahul Bhaiya) was the ‘Leader of Opposition’ and this happened in the present Assembly when Satyadev Katare is the ‘Leader of Opposition’. On both the occasions, even after getting Sonia Gandhi’s approval, it was not felt necessary to convene a meeting of MLAs to fulfil the formality of adopting the required resolution. If the Speaker did not point out the irregularities in election of the Leader and in communication to the Speaker, it was because it suited the ruling BJP.
The MLAs do not give due regard to the Leader because they feel they were not directly involved even in the so-called election, with the result that the Leader keeps gets his substantial perks as Leader of Opposition, hobnobs with the ruling bosses who are always eager to please him and his small coterie. MLAs work almost independently in the Assembly, sometimes even working at cross purposes. Occasionally meetings of Legislature Party are convened to discuss ‘party strategy’ in the House but only rarely a concerted effort of the party was seen to corner the government.
In Punjab, Captain Amarinder Singh has been made the PCC chief, not for his life-long dedication to the Congress or that he enjoys support and confidence of all party activists. He has been hopping between Congress and Shiromani Akali Dal and had been a votary of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution seeking ultimately a separate Khalistan and later was signatory to the succession document known as Amritsar Declaration after the 1984 storming of the Golden Temple to flush out the Bhindrawale gang of terrorists. A scion of the powerful erstwhile kingdom of Patiala, he is a dashing politician, has money and knows how to use that. But he would not allow other party chiefs to function and when he is the party chief he wants total loyalty like a former Maharaj of Patiala which all Congress leaders cannot do. Those who have been removed from positions because of him feel particularly piqued at his style of functioning.
The Captain’s clout
His clout can be gauged from the facts that the Congress party lost Assembly elections twice under his stewardship, held, in an interview to The Indian Express, Rahul Gandhi’s ‘divisive policies’ within the party for the debacle of the Congress in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The paper quoted him as having said, ‘I told him pre-2012 that ‘You will divide each village, which will have its own Youth Congress, and that means it will get divided right to the top; even parents take sides in such a situation, we will have problem’. He didn’t listen and that is exactly what happened’.
Anyone else, if he had said such things about Rahul Gandhi, would have been shown his place. But not the Captain. He has been made the PCC chief to run not the Congress party but his own faction as he is doing now on the eve of the Assembly elections.
With a similar mindset, Digvijaya Singh, too, does not allow anyone to run the party smoothly. When Arun Yadav was made PCC chief he started his job with apparent enthusiasm. At the first meeting of PCC, Jagdish Yadav, PCC secretary and a friend of Arun Yadav, described as inauspicious the name of Digvijaya Singh. He was promptly suspended, which gave a clear message to the party workers that new PCC chief Arun Yadav would not tolerate ‘indiscipline’ by any party leader or worker, even though he may be his personal fried. However, before the day was out, Digvijaya Singh called Arun Yadav (and also made it public) that suspension of Jagdish Yadav should be revoked as he (Jagdish Yadav) was a dedicated Congressman. Many Congressmen were surprised to know Digvijaya Singh’s latest views about Jagdish Yadav because he was never known to have liked Jagdish Yadav or any Yadav leader for that matter. Thus snubbed publicly even for working in the party interest, Arun Yadav lost whatever zeal he had and started on the safe path of running his own faction in the party and, in the process, inviting unsavoury allegations. The party high command was not concerned.
When Suresh Pachauri was PCC chief in Madhya Pradesh, (the late) Jamuna Devi was the Leader of Opposition. A rival Congress leader of Jamuna Devi from her Dhar district brought 200 persons to Bhopal. They held a demonstration against Jamuna Devi and presented a memorandum to Pachauri seeking removal of Jamuna Devi. Pachauri entertained them properly, gladly accepted the memorandum and assured them that he would take it to the Congress president. Irrespective of whether he took it to the Congress president, the party high command never tried to stem the rot. The two continued in their separate ways, often working against each other. However, Jamuna Devi never betrayed the party interests. Pachauri did with impunity.
Uttarakhand and Assam are recent history. The Congress high command never tried to stem the rot which had long been going on in the two States. If the Congress government was saved in Uttarakhand, it was because of judicial intervention for which Arun Jaitley (read Modi government) is seething with anger and must be thinking of some ways to show the Judiciary its place. Assam has slipped away from the hands of Congress. Now it fears the crisis of existence in the entire North-East as well as in the South Indian States where high command has never stepped in to bring the warring groups within the party together.
The Maihar Assembly by-election result has boosted the sagging morale of Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, shattered the dream of Ajay Singh to emerge as the Congress leader of Vindhya region and debunked the myth spread by the Arun Yadav camp about the resurgence of Congress in the State after the party’s victory in the Ratlam lok Sabha constituency.
The by-election, held on February 13, was caused by the resignation of Narayan Tripathi who had won from there as Congress candidate in 2013 but had later joined BJP and resigned his Assembly seat. He was fielded by the BJP as its candidate against Manish Patel of Congress and 13 others. Manish had contested from the Maihar seat as Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate in 2013. Maihar is part of Satna Lok Sabha constituency.
Chouhan’s confidence was shaken by the defeat of the BJP candidate in the Ratlam Lok Sabha by-election held in November last. The by-election was necessitated by the death of Dileep Singh Bhuria who had won from there in the 2014 Lok Sabha general elections on the BJP ticket. In the by-election, BJP fielded Dileep Singh Bhuria’s daughter Nirmala Bhuria as its candidate. The chief minister, and several of his cabinet colleagues, camped in the constituency for several days during the campaign. Chouhan addressed nearly two dozen rallies in support of Nirmala. When the results came, Kantilal Bhuria of the Congress was declared elected by a convincing margin of around 89,000 votes.
Maihar was crucial for both the parties, the BJP and the Congress. The latter, having registered an impressive victory in the Ratlam Lok Sabha constituency less than three months ago, wanted to continue its winning spree. The BJP, shattered by the defeat in Ratlam, wanted to arrest the further erosion in its support base.
More than that was involved the stake of two individuals, Ajay Singh and Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Ajay Singh, son of former Union minister Arjun Singh, was keen to establish his domination in the party in the Vindhya region. He was the Congress candidate for Lok Sabha from Satna constituency in 2014. Chouhan had ‘managed’ Narayan Prasad Tripathi (then Congress MLA from Maihar Assembly segment of Satna Lok Sabha constituency) who was said to have substantially sabotaged Ajay Singh’s chance of winning. As the party was mulling action against Tripathi, Chouhan made him join the BJP and resign from the Assembly with the promise that he would ensure his entry into the Assembly on the BJP ticket.
Narayan Tripathi who, as Congress candidate, had won by a margin of around 7,000 votes in 2013, recorded a victory by a margin of over 27,500 votes as BJP candidate this time.
Arun Yadav, after his brief and not-so-glorious stint in the Union Cabinet, was appointed PCC chief in January 2014. Senior leaders of the faction-ridden Congress in the State never took him seriously and he has also not shown any appreciable skills in trying to enlist their support. He, though, has the full support of AICC general secretary and in-charge of Madhya Pradesh affairs Mohan Prakash. The duo, however, could neither take steps to enthuse the demoralised party workers nor could they establish a comfortable working relationship with the media at large. It is a moot point if the Maihar verdict will make the party high command sit up and take notice of the party affairs in Madhya Pradesh.
After Bhopal Raj Bhavan’s alleged involvement in Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s infamous VYAPAM scam became public, Congress leader and former Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Ajay Singh suggested that Governor Ram Naresh Yadav should resign. Ajay Singh was a bit too late in seeking Yadav’s resignation, like his father Arjun Singh who could never take a political decision at the right time.
The right time for seeking Yadav’s resignation was when the Governor had, by his inexplicable action, lowered the dignity of the Constitution, brought to disrepute the office of the Governor and created embarrassment for the Congress party, to which he himself belongs, on the eve of the November 2013 Assembly elections. The conduct of most of the occupants of the Bhopal Raj Bhavan in the past couple of decades has, sadly, been less than exemplary.
The Assembly was abruptly adjourned while a Congress-sponsored motion of lack of confidence in the BJP’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan government was pending. The motion, levelling serious charges of corruption against Chouhan and his family members and close relatives, was admitted on July 9 (2013) and the time allotted for a discussion in the House. When it was taken up for a debate on July 11, Speaker Ishwardas Rohani called Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh to speak. However, Deputy Leader of Opposition Rakesh Singh Chaturvedi stood up and said that he was opposed to the no-confidence motion. The BJP members were promptly on their feet hailing him and creating loud noise. The Congress members took a little time to recover from this sudden shock and denounce Chaturvedi.
In the free-for-all that followed, minister of legislative affairs Narottam Mishra moved a motion for an adjournment of the House. Speaker Rohani promptly adjourned the House sine die, leaving Opposition members flabbergasted. Top BJP leaders led by chief minister Chouhan hugged and lionised Chaturvedi and took him outside where Chaturvedi announced before media persons that he was joining the BJP. Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh (who lacks the acumen of his late father) made the tactical mistake of not opposing the motion moved by Narottam Mishra for an adjournment of the House. That, though, was a minor thing.
The Congress then petitioned Governor Ram Naresh Yadav. The Governor had two options before him. He could prorogue the Assembly under Article 174(2) of the Constitution or he could send a message to the House under Article 175(2) for the consideration of the pending motion. Article 175(2) says: “The Governor may send messages to the House or Houses of the Legislature of the State, whether with respect to a Bill pending in the Legislature or otherwise, and a House to which any message is so sent shall with all convenient despatch consider any matter required by the message to be taken into consideration.”
This is followed by Rule 20 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Madhya Pradesh Vidhan Sabha which says: “Message by Governor: – Where a message from the Governor for the Vidhan Sabha under Article 175(2) of the Constitution is received by the Speaker, he shall read the message to the House and give necessary directions in regard to the procedure that shall be followed for the consideration of the matters referred to in the message. In giving these directions the Speaker shall be empowered to suspend or vary the rules to such extent as it may be necessary to do so.”
Instead of acting in either way, the Governor started consultations with all and sundry, the lawyers and Constitutional experts included. He also sought opinion from the Advocate-General who has his office at Jabalpur. Congress leaders met him several times as did the leaders of some other parties. He had meetings with chief minister Chouhan and even called Speaker Rohani. In between, he made a trip to Delhi leaving an impression behind that he had gone to take directions. On return from Delhi, too, he continued to dither.
Then on July 26, he wrote a brief letter to the chief minister suggesting that the Assembly session should be reconvened. It was a vague and illiterate letter because the Executive does not come between Governor (who is part and head of the Legislature) and the Assembly. Moreover, the Governor did not cite under which provision of the Constitution or any other law he had written to the chief minister. Predictably, the chief minister did not take any notice of the letter. The whole thing came as a huge embarrassment to the Congress which was much too confident of debating the no-confidence motion in the House with the intervention of the Governor.
Rohani’s act in abruptly adjourning the Assembly was reprehensible enough, but what Governor Yadav did was most abominable. Instead of taking a decision either way as mandated by the Constitution, he started dilly-dallying and reportedly making compromises with chief minister Chouhan, casting thus an indelible slur on the institution of Governor.
MP’s politics of wheat procurement
Posted on: May 11, 2012
Shivraj Singh Chauhan has a genius for converting everything into a profitable racket and then obstreperously blame the Congress-led UPA government for ignoring the interests of Madhya Pradesh. The IAS officers help obsequiously in his machinations. The procurement of wheat is a case in point.
Long before the current procurement season started, the chief minister had started proclaiming that the government was fully equipped to purchase all the wheat that came to the mandis and that no farmer would have to wait. The situation was now and then reviewed by the chief minister and chief secretary Avani Vaish as well as other officials concerned and the arrangements were found satisfactory.
The State government’s vast network of officials connected with agricultural production had estimated that around 65 lakh tonnes of wheat would be available for purchase by the government agencies. The government needed 2.8 lakh bales of gunny bags for the purpose. However, the State government asked the Centre in November last year to arrange for it only 1.44 lakh bales and stated that the State would arrange on its own the remaining 1.44 lakh bales needed, which it did not do.
In April when the farmers were out with their produce at the mandis (which are managed by the bureaucracy as the government has not held the mandi elections for quite some time), the chief minister started making distress calls to the Centre for immediately dispatching to the State the gunny bags and even threatened to sit on a dharna, along with the BJP MPs, in front of Parliament House in Delhi to highlight the anti-farmer attitude of the UPA government. The State government also raised the estimate of the wheat arrival in the mandis from the earlier 65 lakh tonnes to 80 lakh tonnes.
Chauhan’s enthusiasm for holding a demonstration against the UPA government in Delhi was somewhat checked when Union Food Minister K V Thomas wrote to the chief minister calling his bluff and the State Congress led by Kantilal Bhuria announced a programme of State-wide agitation to expose Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s mischief. Thomas said in his letter that planning for purchase of bags by the Madhya Pradesh government was not accurate and it increased its initial projected requirement of 1.44 lakh bales of bags to be purchased from the Directorate General of Supplies & Disposals to 3.19 lakh bales. The supply of jute bags was bound to be affected in the State as the Madhya Pradesh government revised its requirement of jute bags frequently, while other States like Punjab and Haryana had firm planning in November 2011 itself, he said. Thomas added, “It may be impressed upon the State officials concerned to properly plan for their jute bag requirements in future in a more realistic manner.”
Chauhan has been doing it with specific objectives in mind, according to those who have been keenly watching his wheat politics. First, he and his chief secretary and other officials invite the farmers with the firm assurance that they would not have to wait for selling their produce in the mandis. Initially the procurement goes smoothly. Then the chief minister announces that there are no bags because the Centre has not supplied these and the procurement stops. The farmers are not in a position to wait indefinitely or take the produce back and store it (where?). They start making distress sale to private traders for Rs 800-900 per quintal whereas the minimum support price (MSP) for wheat has been fixed at Rs 1365 in Madhya Pradesh. Who the beneficiary private traders are is anybody’s guess.
Distress sale
By the time the bags start arriving in the State, many of the farmers have made distress sale of their produce. In anticipation of this, Chauhan has already increased the figure of estimated wheat production this year from 65 lakh tonnes to 80 lakh tonnes. In all probability, this “increase” is phoney. Some of the wheat purchased in distress sale for Rs 800-900 per quintal is expected to flow back to the government purchase centres where it would fetch a price of Rs 1365 per quintal. A neat game of hundreds of crores of rupees within a few days!
Besides, some “trusted farmers” from the neighbouring States may be ready with their wheat to sell at the government purchase centres in Madhya Pradesh because here they would get more for their produce. The Madhya Pradesh government is paying a bonus of Rs 100 over and above the minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 1285 fixed by the Centre. How this is done was explained by Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Ajay Singh in July last year by issuing a well-prepared “black paper” on the State government’s wheat procurement policy. Some examples:
The government had declared Chhatarpur and Tikamgarh districts as drought-affected but lakhs of tonnes of wheat was procured from there. The government procured more than 800 quintals of wheat from a canteen owner in Harda, Gvond Moolaji, though he owned only around ten acres of land. The recorded yield in the district is around 20 quintals of wheat per acre.
The caretaker of the Civil Supplies Corporation godown at Ashoknagar had refused to accept 500 quintals of wheat as he had found that it was from the previous season. The sample tests had also shown it to be old. Wheat purchased from Uttar Pradesh was shown as having been purchased from the local farmers in Pichhor and Khaniadhana tehsils of Shivpuri district.
The “black paper” listed instances of large scale bungling in weighing and transport also.
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A political vendetta!
Posted on: February 15, 2012
The criminal investigation department (CID) of the police, at least in Madhya Pradesh, has been used for decades as the dumping ground for the politically inconvenient high profile criminal cases. When a judicial commission, for instance, found the involvement of then chief minister Arjun Singh in the mysterious murder of a government driver, his name was added to the list of the accused and the case was handed over to the CID in the late eighties. No one has since heard of what happened to that case.
It came, therefore, as a BIG surprise when the CID officers swooped on the house of Congress MLA Kalpana Parulekar at Mahidpur in Ujjain district one afternoon early this month, arrested her, brought her to Bhopal and produced her at the residence of a judicial magistrate in the night. The magistrate remanded her to judicial custody.
Congress workers led by PCC chief Kantilal Bhuria and Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh held protests across the State, describing Parulekar’s arrest as political vendetta.
Parulekar is an indefatigable fighter in the cause of farmers. She has been a thorn in the flesh for the BJP government as she had earlier been for the Congress government of Digvijay Singh.
Her crime this time, however, was that she had distributed in the House and then at the press room during the last Assembly session towards the end of November a photograph showing Madhya Pradesh Lokayukta Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar in the RSS uniform. On Naolekar’s complaint that the photograph was morphed, the police had registered an FIR and entrusted the case to the CID “for investigation”.
Not only has the CID functioned out of character in this case, the judiciary, too, did something extraordinary in view of the “gravity” the offence. Kalpana Parulekar’s application for bail was rejected by the chief judicial magistrate (CJM). The appeal against the order of the CJM was also turned down by the Sessions Court in the interest of justice.
Shivraj Singh Chauhan unhinged
Posted on: January 30, 2012
Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan is feeling uneasy because of the RSS attitude, the rumblings within his own party and the Congress onslaught. The RSS attitude had become clear over two years back at the BJP’s national council conclave at Indore. The newly elected party president Nitin Gadkari had virtually snubbed Chauhan (who was sitting with him on the dais) by ignoring him while praising highly the development works being carried on by Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in his State. Gadkari had a few words of praise even for Nitish Kumar, only an ally of the BJP, for the good work he was doing in Bihar. Chauhan was even left out of the grouping of top party leaders mentioned by Gadkari towards the close of the three-day conclave.
Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj had then tried to lessen Chauhan’s public humiliation by promptly taking the mike and stating that Gujarat could be a model of good governance but the Madhya Pradesh government was a model of sensitivity (Gujarat good governance ka model ho sakta hai, lekin Madhya Pradesh government samvedansheelta ka model hai).
Later on, State BJP vice-president Raghunandan Sharma created a flutter in the party circles by describing chief minister Chauhan as “ghoshnaveer” (one who makes empty promises). So upset were Chauhan and State BJP president Prabhat Jha that they promptly removed Sharma from the post of vice-president and served a show-cause notice on him seeking his explanation within ten days on his allegedly anti-chief minister utterances. (Jha’s antipathy towards Raghunandan Sharma goes back to the early 1990s when Jha was party PRO virtually watching then chief minister Patwa’s interests and Sharma was the BJP office secretary).
Raghunandan Sharma, a Rajya Sabha member, is not in the habit of talking about party matters in public unless there is a pressing reason for that. More importantly, he has maintained his close association with the RSS. Those who had predicted disciplinary action against him were in for a shock when Sharma replied to the show cause notice without feeling apologetic about his observations.
That Sharma was virtually conveying the RSS sentiments about the chief minister became even more apparent when Chauhan roared at a public function at Indore that his government would include Gita in the school syllabus and dared anyone to oppose it. Chauhan had chosen the opportunity to proclaim his abiding love for Gita at a time when RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was holding an RSS conclave in a neighbouring district. A few days later Sharma, addressing a public function along with Govindacharya, said that those who talked about Gita and philosophy and preached others about the value-oriented politics were themselves practising valueless politics.
In the midst of Chauhan’s problems with the RSS, the Congress party’s no-confidence motion against his government debated in the winter session of the Assembly exposed the rampant corruption and all-pervading inefficiency in various departments. None of his ministers was able to reply to the specific allegations made in the charge-sheet as well as by Congress members some of whom had come well-prepared. In his reply, Chauhan spoke for over three hours but his harangue was ridiculously devoid of substance (as it always is). Half through his speech in the House, an Opposition woman member urged him to please stop because his ranting was now causing headache.
Chauhan and his colleagues were still assessing the damage caused by the no-confidence motion when they received a jolt from unexpected quarters. Chairman of the State BJP’s disciplinary committee and former Rajya Sabha member Kailash Sarang wrote an article in a local Hindi daily in which he described the Congress party’s no-confidence motion as ringing alarm bells for the BJP in the State.
The allegations levelled against the BJP government during the discussion on the no-confidence motion give an indication of the Congress party’s preparedness for the future which, in fact, should serve as alarm bells for the BJP. Sarang recalls that some of the allegations could not be discussed in the House because of technical reasons (such as belonging to the period of the previous Vidhan Sabha). Those allegations could not be discussed in the House but it was certain that the Congress would take them to the people in the coming days. The Opposition was able to present effectively and aggressively the allegations which were included in the no-confidence motion, Sarang observed.
To rub salt into the wounds of the State BJP leaders, Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh promptly wrote to Kailash Sarang congratulating him for showing courage to publicly discuss the shortcomings in his own party. Ajay Singh took the opportunity to reiterate that the allegations levelled in the no-confidence motion were substantiated with facts and figures but the BJP ministers had, instead of replying to them, resorted to dilatory tactics.
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