The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won the recently held civic body elections in Madhya Pradesh with flying colours. The election results also show that Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has lost none of his touch in state’s grass roots politics with the BJP’s performance being billed as the best so far, decimating the Congress party almost completely.
The local civic body elections were held two years after Supreme Court intervention. Congress leader Kamalnath, who was chief minister before Chouhan, had postponed the elections in order to make a favourable atmosphere for his party. After Chouhan wrested power from him in March 2020, the chief minister could not allow local elections to happen in view of the devastating Corona pandemic. The BJP under his leadership, though, had won 19 seats out of 28 in Assembly by-elections, the rest going to the Congress.
The local body elections were being seen as a litmus test for Chouhan’s leadership and BJP’s booth management skills. BJP state chief Vishnu Datt Sharma has worked out a strategy for booth management to target garnering 51% of the votes in coming assembly elections. Replicating the BJP formula, the Congress party too has devised a strategy to build teams at both the block and the booth levels. The local elections were thus being viewed by both parties as the semi-final to the Assembly elections in 2023. Though, the local elections were fought without open party affiliations, both parties appointed observers and declared candidates for district and janpad chairpersons.
The results, however, clearly show that Chouhan and state party chief Sharma were together able to upset the apple cart of the Congress and its state chief Kamalnath. The Congress was though able to win 5 mayoral seats out of 16 municipal corporations for the first time, 3 of sitting Congress MLAs lost mayoral elections. The election results have also shown that Congress has lost it old base in municipalities and city panchayats. BJP candidatesand candidates supported by it won elections to 85% of the total municipal heads. This percentage went as high as 90.58% in city panchayats.
If we look at the results of the three-tier local body elections, the BJP has won 41 seats out of 51 city panchayat heads. The Sidhi election has been stayed by the court. Congress had wide popular support in some district panchayats, including Bhopal, but the party lost elections of panchayat heads to the BJP. Observers give credit to Chouhan’s strategy to make this happen. Chouhan was in constant touch with the members of district and janpad panchayats. The chief minister met some of them and won them over to his party. The Congress could win only eight district panchayats. Out of 312 janpad panchayat heads, the BJP won 227 seats. The Congress could not win more than 65 seats, whereas 21 Independent and other candidates became janpad heads.
The BJP also won 22,924 village panchayat sarpanch seats out of 20,613 in the state.
One of the highlights of the local body elections is that 629 panchyats elected their heads and members unopposed after Chouhan gave a call for “Samras Panchyats” and also declared incentives for it to happen. The objective was to let villagers elect their panchayat leaders and members in consultation with each other, without any contest. Some villages elected women to their panchayats both as sarpanch and members.
The elections had another highlight. Kamalnath managed to win BJP rebel Sanjay Ponhar over to his party, who was elected unopposed to the Chhindwara district panchayat as its head. Ponhar joined the Congress a day before his election. However, the BJP won 6 out of 11 janpads in Chhindwara, including Kamalnath’s home turf Mohkhed. Digvijay Singh, the veteran Congress leader, had to eat a humble pie in these elections as his strategy came a cropper. He was there to oversee the election for the chairmanship of the Bhopal district panchyat. On the election day, he was there at the venue accompanied by former Union minister Suresh Pachauri and other leaders of the Congress. During the day, he had heated arguments with BJP leader Bhupendra Singh and some legislators. The senior Congress leader and former chief minister also had a scuffle with the police. But the Congress leadership failed to prevent cross-voting and the BJP candidate won to their dismay, though 8 out of 10 district panchayat members were Congress supporters. Between claims and counter-claims of winning many seats, the Congress leadership has lodged complaints with the Election Commission.
