From farm aid to Gir forest and Sardar Sarover dam, Chouhan fails to confront Modi
The Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister's poor equation with the prime minister and the shadow of a huge exam scam have considerably weakened his bargaining position.
Photo Credit: Raveendran/AFP
A change in government in New Delhi, in May, has changed the Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan as well. He seems to have ceased being angry with the Centre for “neglecting the interests and aspirations of the state’s people”, a previous refrain of his Bharatiya Janata Party government, whose tenure has coincided with the decade that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance was in power.
Chouhan’s change of heart is reflected in the manner that he has refrained from seeking aid from the BJP-led Narendra Modi-government for Madhya Pradesh farmers whose standing crops have been destroyed by untimely rain and hailstorms over the past week.
“Why is the chief minister silent this time while the natural calamity is no less devastating than the one last year?” asked the Madhya Pradesh Congress committee president, Arun Yadav, in a press conference on March 16 in Bhopal, which included other party members, such as the leader of the opposition, Satya Deo Katare. “Whatever has happened to his anger against the Centre’s apathy towards MP’s farmers?”
The Congress accused the chief minister of being afraid of putting the state’s cases before Prime Minister Narendra Modi. BJP insiders admit that the widespread perception that there was a rivalry between him and Modi in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha election weighs heavily on the chief minister’s mind. Within the party, Chouhan is seen as being part of the LK Advani-Sushma Swaraj camp, which has frosty relations with Modi.
Moreover, the shadow of a multi-billion rupee scam involving the professional examination board, which conducts tests for entry into medical colleges and for some government jobs, looms over him. This has rendered Chouhan even more diffident vis-à-vis the prime minister.
Crops damaged
Crops of wheat, gram, masoor dal (lentils), coriander and mustard have suffered widespread damage in 1,400 villages of the state’s 15 districts, according to the latest assessment of the state’s agriculture department.
A similar natural calamity had hit the state in February and March last year. At that time, the chief minister exhibited marked alacrity in demanding aid from Manmohan Singh’s government. He had little patience with the agriculture ministry’s advice that he should first prepare a detailed memorandum on the extent of damage to crops.
Chouhan had insisted that crops worth Rs 10,000 crore had been damaged and that the Centre should immediately provide a Rs 5,000-crore package on humanitarian grounds. He had accused the prime minister of denying him an appointment.
A year ago, the chief minister and his cabinet colleagues even sat on a four-hour dharna in Bhopal to highlight the UPA government's ostensible callousness. The state’s 21 BJP Lok Sabha members, led by Sushma Swaraj, even called on President Pranab Mukherjee to seek his intervention for getting central aid for the state’s farmers. Chauhan, Katare and others also went to Mukherjee to plead their case.
Sardar Sarovar
This is not the first time that the Opposition has mocked the chief minister’s timidity in representing the state’s concerns before Modi. The chief minister has not uttered a word on the Modi government’s unilateral decision in June to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam, although Madhya Pradesh will be the worst-hit state in terms of the number of families who will be displaced as a result of the height increase.
Within a fortnight of Narendra Modi becoming prime minister, the Narmada Control Authority gave a nod to the Gujarat government for raising the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam from 122 to 138 metres. Following this, Gujarat chief minister Anandi Ben Patel rushed to the dam site to perform a puja to signal that construction would soon begin. Her Madhya Pradesh counterpart was not even consulted by the Authority, which is headed by the prime minister. A around the time the decision was taken, Chouhan called on Modi and gave him a shawl and coconut to congratulate him on being elected prime minister, but said nothing about the dam.
A press release issued after the meeting said that the chief minister had spoken to the prime minister about various issues in Madhya Pradesh, including changing the format of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and opening new vistas of development. But there was no mention of the Sardar Sarovar project.
Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar resents Chouhan’s silence on the matter. In October, Patkar had led a demonstration in Bhopal against the decision to raise height of the dam in front of the chief minister’s house. She told journalists that the height increase would submerge nearly 45,000 families belonging to 200 villages of Madhya Pradesh. Despite this, the Madhya Pradesh chief minister has kept quiet, she lamented.
As recently as March 14, the Supreme Court slammed the MP government’s lackadaisical attitude towards the rehabilitation of those displaced by the Sardar Sarovar dam. "File a report on the rehabilitation and the manner in which the rehabilitation has been done," the social justice bench of justices Madan B Lokur and UU Lalit said. The bench was unhappy about the affidavit filed by the Madhya Pradesh government. “This is a most casual approach. You have given no details.”
Gir lions
Chouhan’s apparent surrender before Modi on the issue of moving Gir lions from Gujarat to Madhya Pradesh is no less baffling. The Madhya Pradesh government fought a legal battle for nine years with Gujarat for the translocation of lions from the Gir National Park to Palpur Kuno in Madhya Pradesh. The MP government has already spent more than Rs 400 crore to prepare a habitat for the lions, after rehabilitating 24 villages in the vicinity of the Palpur Kuno sanctuary in Sheopur district in the eastern part of the state.
On April 15, 2013, the MP government won the battle when the Supreme Court ordered the Gujarat government to start shifting lions to Palpur Kuno sanctuary within six months. Nearly two years have elapsed since the court verdict but the MP chief minister has not been able to summon courage to seek the prime minister’s intervention for relocating the lions. As Gujarat chief minister, Modi had anyway vehemently opposed shifting the lions.
Having given up hope of getting the prized animals from Gir, the MP government is now toying with the idea of bringing zoo lions from Hyderabad to the Palpur Kuno sanctuary, according to a report in The Times of India in January.
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