Shivraj Singh Chouhan nine years ago and now

I wrote this piece nine years ago. wondering what it looks like reading today. ........... 

Shivraj yet to clear test on political acumen

• RAKESH Dixit, Bhopal
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• Updated: May 29, 2006 20:02 IST

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• just wondering what it was , a good nine years later ....

AN UNCANNY similarity with Digvijay Singh might enthuse Shivraj Singh Chouhan to hope for a long innings as he completes six months in the chief minister’s office today.

In 1988, Digvijay missed the bus when the then chief minister Arjun Singh had to relinquish the office owing to a court verdict in the Churhat lottery case. Digvijay had to wait for five years for coronation and went on to make a history of being the chief minister for longest period in Madhya Pradesh.

A good 16 years later, history repeated itself.  Almost. Shivraj too missed the chance when Chief Minister Uma Bharti chose Babulal Gaur as successor after the Hubli court case. Just 15 months later, Shivraj was elected chief minister.

But history doesn’t repeat itself twice too often. The dissimilarities between Digvijay and Shivraj are too obvious to state. 

Shivraj is yet to show the kind of political acumen that had helped Digvijay Singh sail through 10 long years in the choppy political waters. His vision might have been skewed or flawed but Digvijay did have a clear development vision nonetheless. He deliberately promoted social sector at the expense of industrial infrastructure and paid the price of it.

His successor Uma Bharti’s turbulent eight months might be an eminently forgettable nightmare but she did chalk out a definable development roadmap — the Panch-Ja. Her successor Babulal Gaurr’s alleged penchant for youthful peccadilloes at 75 cannot rob him of the credit he richly deserves for initiating urban development, especially encroachment removal. For good or bad, he will always be identifiable with bulldozer.

Shivraj hasn’t shown any sign of earnestly pursuing a specific development plan so far. He is, incidentally, most  closely identifiable with Kanyadaan scheme for poor marriageable girls, much like Gaur was with Gokul Gram and Uma Bharti with Panch-Ja.

The Chief Minister, of course, fancies himself in the role of a Development Man. The chant of development is almost fetish with him. Many senior bureaucrats reportedly laughed in their sleeves in official meetings when the Chief Minister spelt out his development agenda so volubly and with such loud gesticulation as though he were addressing some BJP workers’ meeting.

Well-meaning senior bureaucrats feel the Chief Minister’s keenness for development might be laudable but he must guard his dream against degenerating into a laughable litany.

Shivraj talked about IT policy but not much headway is visible on this sector. He has also promised abundant power but hasn’t spelt out where will he get additional power from — purchasing is a bad, short-term solution and a recipe for financial disaster. The frequent power cuts, meanwhile, are still reminding the days and nights the BJP had promised the people to rid of. Roads, no doubt, have improved but the improvement had begun much before Shivraj took over. 

The Chief Minister has initiated some commendable projects like Jalabhishek for water conservation and a score of healthcare schemes. He also appears earnest about wooing investments in the State. For each sector of development he has either announced or launched at least one project. But things are just happening without a pattern.

Six months is too early to comment on cumulative effect of those schemes on the State’s development. It is too early to see a vision becoming reality but good enough period to see straws in the wind.  

Few chief ministers in MP have had the kind of political conduciveness to rule that Shivraj enjoys. As of now, he faces no serious challenge within the party; the high command is supporting him to the hilt; he has a rather docile state BJP president for a company; and, all the BJP warhorses appear too jaded to pose him any challenge.

For now, Uma Bharti too doesn’t look like a challenge to the Chief Minister. Most of her supporters in the BJP have preferred power to loyalty.

Many of them have become more loyal to the CM than they ever were to Uma Bharti. However, this situation should make the Chief Minister more cagey than cocky. If MLAs and ministers can ditch Uma for power, they will as well ditch Shivraj Singh when chips are down. Babulal Gaur is the most eligible person to bear testimony to the rank opportunism in the BJP that did him in. He is still asking any body who would care to listen as to why he was removed from the Chief Minister’s post.

Gaur’s fate should be a lesson for Shivraj. More so because he has already shown political churlishness in the Budhni by-election. His victory in Budhni could have been easier and bigger, and, most importantly, less controversial.

Although no coterie is clearly visible around the Chief Minister, some political minnows and power brokers are boasting
proximity to him. How far have they leveraged this alleged proximity for influence-peddling in the administration and making money is any body’s guess. But the CM is well advised to be wary of such people if he cares for reputation as crusader against corruption. Such a reputation is hard to come by and easy to demolish.

mysterious deaths of vyapam scam suspects

CORRUPTION PROBE

Madhya Pradesh shows little will to investigate 32 mysterious deaths in cash-for-jobs scam

Most of the dead were aged between 25 and 30, hailing from Bhind and Gwalior districts.

Rakesh Dixit  · Yesterday · 05:00 pm

Photo Credit: IANS

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It is an investigation into a cash-for-jobs scam, but it's turning into a macabre crime thriller. As the Special Task Force inquiring into corruption in Madhya Pradesh's Professional Examination Board moves ahead on the two-year-old case, it has reported that 32 suspects have died. However, the main opposition party in the state, the Congress, insists the number is as high as 156.

The PEB scam, as the affair has some to be known, surfaced in July 2013 when eight young men were arrested as they attempted to take a premedical college test as proxies for registered candidates. An initial investigation found that over a dozen tests for recruitment in government departments, conducted by the state examination board, had been fixed in collusion with board officials, middlemen, politicians and bureaucrats.

Since then, a disproportionate number of people interrogated in connection with the swindle or prosecuted for it have been found dead. The latest Special Task Force status report submitted to the Madhya Pradesh High court-appointed Special Investigation Team headed by Justice Chandresh Bhushan on May 27 lists 32 deaths.

Four glaring cases

These four cases were among the 32. In January 2012, the body of Indore medical college student Namrata Damor, 23, was discovered on the railway tracks in Ujjain. On July 4, 2014, Jabalpur medical college dean Dr DK Sakalle, 58, allegedly committed suicide at his official residence. On March 25 this year, the body  Madhya Pradesh governor Ram Naresh Yadav’s son Shailesh, 50,  was recovered from his Lucknow home. On April 28, pharmacist Vijay Singh Patel,35, was found dead in a hotel owned by a Bharatiya Janata Party MLA in Kanker (Chhattisgarh).

The report has mentioned names and age of the dead but did not say under what circumstances the deaths occurred. It is also silent on whether the suspects died before or after they were made accused in the scam.

Most of the dead were in the age group of 25-30. They were either students, who fraudulently secured admissions in medical colleges after paying hefty sum to touts of the Professional Examination Board’s bosses or job aspirants who benefited from manipulation of the recruitment tests. Significantly, most of them are from Bhind and Gwalior districts.

More allegations

Leader of opposition Satyadeo Katare, who hails from Bhind, claims as many as 156 persons connected with the scam have died so far. “The 156 dead include accused and suspects, their family members, whistleblowers and witnesses”, Katare told Scroll. However, he could not furnish a list of those he claims are dead.

The SIT chairman on May 28 assured journalists that he would seek detailed investigation into the deaths. However, he declined to divulge more details, claiming this was a "highly sensitive" matter.

Given the state government’s marked reluctance to institute an investigation into the much-publicised deaths of Jabalpur medical college dean Dr Sakalle and pharmacist Vijay Singh, it looks highly unlikely that the Special Task Force will even try to ascertain causes of the 32 deaths. Moreover, the investigating agency has to complete its task before June 15, the deadline given to it by the Supreme Court.

Before he died under mysterious circumstances, Dr Sakalle was scrutinising the records of students who gained admission through the manipulated pre-medical college test conducted by the examination board. Home Minister Babulal Gaur had assured the state assembly that Dr Sakalle’s alleged self-immolation would be investigated into but no action followed. For Vijay Singh’s mysterious death, the Madhya Pradesh government passed the buck on Chhattisgath police as the incident occurred in Kanker district of the neighbouring state. Singh had been arrested in connection with police constable test and was on bail.

Mysterious deaths

No inquiry was initiated into the death of Namrata Damor either, despite a postmortem report confirming that she had been murdered. The Ujjain police dismissed the case as suicide. Damor had passed the pre-medical test in 2009, allegedly with help of a racketeer who worked for scam kingpin Dr Jagdish Sagar. Likewise, governor Ram Naresh Yadav’s son’s death was also attributed to sudden heart attack.

Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Babulal Gaur has declined to comment on the report of 32 deaths and Special Investigative Team chairman’s promise of an investigation, saying it is for the Special Task Force to take a call in this matter.

The case is so so complex and humongous that even two years after the STF began its probe, 650 accused are yet to be arrested. Over 2,000 accused are in jail. The Special Task Force has filed more than 60 chargesheets in various courts in Bhopal and Gwalior in connection with the scam. Since January 2014, it has periodically been submitting reports to the progress of the inquiry to the Special Investigative Team. The SIT, in turn, files the report to the Madhya Pradesh High court which is monitoring the case.

Institutionalising charity for Madhya pradesh scribes

Institutionalising charity for scribes

Rakesh Dixit

Successive governments in Madhya Pradesh since beginning of late Arjun Singh’s chief ministership in 1980 have been known for doling out largesse to pliable journalists to buy favour. However, beneficiaries of government munificence would be too conscious of its immorality to admit, much less flaunt, the favours openly. The governments too would be hush- hush about their unethical generosity.  None of them sought to ‘institutionalise’ charity to the fourth estate. The Shivraj Singh government has changed rules of the game—for worse.      

Facing the heat of multi-billion rupee professional examination board (PEB) aka Vyapam scam, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has become rather too generous towards media of late.  Two months ago, the government distributed laptops to all accredited journalists, around 200, in the state. Last month the chief minister promised to build a magnificent press club building in the heart of Bhopal. And the April was the month of giving away cash awards to 68 journalists. Two of them were consulting editor of India Today magazine Shekhar Gupta and India TV editor-in-chief Rajat Sharma. Gupta was conferred the 2014 Vidya Niwas Mishra national journalism award and Sharma was honoured with 2014 Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi national journalism award. Each award carries Rs 2 lakh cash.

All other recipients of the two awards for the years 2011, 2012 and 2013 are known RSS sympathisers/ ideologues. They are Kailash Chandra Pant and Mahesh Shrivastava (Bhopal), Shankar Sharan (Delhi), Rajnath Surya (Lucknow), Asim Kumar Mitra (Kolkata)and Dhirendra Nath Chakravarty (Assam). By the way, Rajat Sharma was also student union leader in the Delhi University with allegiance to Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the RSS.

Sharma alluded to his ABVP link during the award function when he recalled that he knew Shivraj Singh Chouhan for the last 40 years. Shivraj, like Rajat Sharma, was ABVP’s student leader in Bhopal’s Hamidia college 40 years ago.  Among the national award recipients Shekhar Gupta is the only winner with no known history of RSS association. Incidentally, Gupta is also the lone awardee from the English language press. Although another journalist representing an English newspaper was given away state level journalism award, his stories written in Hindi are translated for publishing.

Kailash Chandra Pant, 79, edits a literary magazine in Bhopal. He was never associated with journalism. Mahesh Shrivastava , 73, after retirement as Dainik Bhaskar editor in Bhopal was appointed vice president of the state government’s Rashtriya Ekta Samiti with minister of state rank. He has penned a song for Madhya Pradesh government. Shankar Sharan is the chief vigilance officer in NCERT, New Delhi. The author-educationist is known for severe Marxist -bashing in his books. He has never been a journalist. Rajnath Surya, 78, has been a BJP Rajya Sabha member from Uttar Pradesh. Before that the veteran journalist was associated with several newspapers in Lucknow, Patna and Jaipur.

Asim Kumar Mitra, 76, has been a column writer for RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya from Kolkata and Dhirendra Nath Chakravarty, 87, is editor of daily newspaper Shankar Jyoti in Assam.  

Another national journalism award instituted in the name of Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) ideologue Late Manik Chandra Vajpayee was given away to Shyam Khosla (2011), Baban Mishra, Raipur (2012), Rajendra Sharma, Bhopal (2013) and Baldeo Bhai Sharma (2014).

 Khosla, 83, has been a full-time RSS volunteer. He is also founder-member of RSS leaning journalist union, National Union of Journalists. He was associated with Hindustan, wire agency Hindustan Samachar, Tribune and Indian Express.  Baban Mishra has served in various capacities in RSS newspapers Yug Dharma and Swadesh. VHP leader Rajendra Sharma is owner-editor of Swadesh newspaper which is printed from several cities in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Baldeo Bhai Sharma was editor of RSs mouthpiece Panchjanya. He is more famous for defending BJP and RSS in panel discussions on TV news channels.

Shekhar Gupta and Rajat Sharma were on the dais with Shivraj Singh in a glittering award distribution ceremony at the chief minister’s residence on April 19 evening. Other recipients were in the front row opposite the stage. Razzmatazz of the function was reminiscent of a gaudy film star nite. A huge pandal was erected  for the audience where flashing multi-colour lights swirled, over a dozen TV cameras roved, big screens zoomed in and out the  star guests on the stage in accompaniment with loud music.

“We have had scores of plain, insipid journalist award functions in the past. But this time, we decided to celebrate the ‘tribute’ to the award-winning journalists in a grand style. Hence this extravaganza”, a beaming Shivraj Singh Chouhan gushed  in his speech. He profusely thanked the media for their ‘positive’ contribution in helping Madhya Pradesh remove the tag of BIMARU state.

The award recipients were no less gushing in their praise for the chief minister in the thanks-giving speeches. Shekhar Gupta said the popular chief minister has transformed Madhya Pradesh and brought it among frontrunner states in India in development. He justified award to him, saying he is a foster son of Madhya Pradesh because his foster father Late Prabhash Joshi hailed from the state. Veteran journalist Joshi as resident editor of Indian Express, Chandigarh edition, had recruited Shekhar in early seventies when the latter was 19 years old.

Interestingly, recitation before the award to Gupta mentioned him as editor-in-chief of India Today group.  Shekhar did not correct the mistake in his speech.

Rajat Sharma was so visibly overwhelmed by the honour that he twice referred to Shivraj Singh as Congress leader Digvijay Singh. Later he apologised for the mistake when the chief minister pointed it out to him. Sharma promised Shivraj Singh from the stage to feature him in his famous TV show ‘Aap Ki Adalat’.

After the function was over, the two celebrated journalists were flown back to New Delhi in the state government aircraft.

State level awards from year 2008 to 2014 were also presented to seven journalists in the function. The award carries Rs one lakh cash each. 

Earlier, the chief minister had given away regional journalism awards in seven categories to 49 scribes in a function in Bhopal on April 8. These awards  carried Rs  50,000 each.  The function was marked by chaos as recipients scrambled with their families to have selfies with the chief minister.

The regional and state awards were announced in 2008 but were quietly forgotten. National level awards were instituted in 2011 but no one was chosen for them for four years.

All these years the chief minister did not feel the need to oblige media men with awards. So, they remained undistributed. But the wide media coverage about his alleged involvement in the PEB scam has spurred the chief minister to go on an overdrive to win over journalists.

The government hurriedly set up juries for the dormant awards. Background of the awardees suggests that there were broadly two criteria for selection. The national award should be for RSS men and state/regional awards should be distributed in such a manner that at least one representative of each important paper in the state is covered. No other criterion is evident in the choice of recipients. Nor any criterion was set anyway.   

Jury for the national awards comprised a known RSS volunteer and Makhan Lal Chaturvedi national university of journalism vice chancellor BK Kuthalia. Another member was a local journalist Girija Shankar, who is widely known as a chief minister’s media adviser.   

Senior journalist Lajja Shankar Herdenia says the whole idea of government awarding/rewarding journalists is repugnant. The octogenarian scribe recalls how he had nixed the idea of government award to journalists in 1986 when Motilal Vora was the chief minister.

“ Voraji  had set up a panel comprising veteran journalist KP Narayan and me nd few others as members to prepare criteria for awards to journalists.  We consulted among ourselves the chief minister’s move and concluded that the government had no business of either rewarding or punishing journalists. Our resolution was carried and the idea was nipped in the bud ’, Herdenia recalls.

Another senior journalist ND Sharma says he was surprised to learn that his former editor in Indian Express Shekhar Gupta decided to accept the award.

‘ The beleaguered chief minister has resorted to buying  journalists through awards. This is a flawed and pernicious idea for fair journalism. I am not surprised about others accepting the inducement but Gupta was not expected to follow them.’ ND Sharma had retired from Indian Express in 1999 as special correspondent.

Before the awards, the government had distributed laptop to all accredited journalists, fulfilling an election promise of the BJP. For a year nothing moved on this front. Three months ago, the government woke up to the promise. However, process of identification of eligible beneficiaries of laptop kicked off a row, as a large number of journalists were left out due to strict accreditation rules. The government relaxed the rules to placate the disgruntled.

A senior journalist, who doesn’t want to be identified, laments that the worst part of this charity show is that no journalist in Bhopal has thought it fit to raise serious objection. All the inducements are being lapped up by scribes as though they are entitled to them. 

Why NBA paying for AAP's sins

ALTERNATIVE POLITICS

Why Narmada Bachao movement is paying the price for the fractures in Aam Aadmi Party

Rakesh Dixit  · Today · 09:00 am

Photo Credit: IANS

The two tallest leaders of the movement, Medha Patkar and Alok Agrawal, have fallen in opposing camps.

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The convulsions in the Aam Aadmi Party have spread far beyond Delhi to the Narmada Valley in Madhya Pradesh. For about 25 years, the Narmada Bachao Andolan had been the admired voice of the thousands of people left dispossessed by government projects on the river. Now because of AAP, the voice is faltering.

The apolitical NBA movement assumed political overtones in January 2014, when two of its tallest leaders, Medha Patkar and Alok Agrawal, joined AAP in their quest to practice and propagate an alternative politics. Patkar contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election from Mumbai and Agrawal from Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh. Both lost, but remained mainstays of the outfit.

It was when AAP cracked, resulting in the ouster of Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, that fault lines unwittingly appeared in the Narmada Bachao Andolan too.

Patkar quit AAP in solidarity with Yadav and Bhushan, while Agrawal, who is the party’s convenor in Madhya Pradesh, stuck around with Kejriwal. There are so far no outward expressions of discord between Patkar and Agrawal – but for the many NBA volunteers in Madhya Pradesh, finding their two foremost leaders in opposing political camps has been confusing as well as demoralising.

Rakesh Diwan, a prominent NBA activist and developmental journalist, lamented the diminishment in the movement’s credibility because of its foray into electoral politics.

“The crisis is quite apparent in the poor response to the ongoing Jal Satyagrah in Ghogalgaon,” said Diwan. “There was a time when NBA used to wield so much moral authority that all political parties would be compelled to take note of our agitations even if they were opposed to our demands. Now they seem to treat NBA as an extension of a discredited political outfit.”

Apathetic administration

The Jal Satyagrah in Ghogalgaon village of Khandwa district had started on April 10. Since then, a group of 22 evacuees of the Omkareshwar dam project on River Narmada have been standing waist deep in the river to protest against the state’s decision to raise the water level in the dam from 189 to 191 metres. They say they will end the agitation only if the administration compensates them with adequate money or an alternative piece of land at a safer place.

But the administration is not listening.

Though some of the protesting farmers have developed skin and fungal infections due to constant submergence in water, the agitation has found no response from Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s government. Alok Agarwal, who is leading the protest, told Scrollthat protestors’ health is deteriorating with every passing hour. “No one from the government’s side or a single medical team has visited the protest site. This shows how serious our government is about farmers.”

Photo credit: IANS

The chief minister has ruled out yielding to the protestors’ demand and accused the Narmada Bachao Andolan activists of being anti-development. He told newsmen on April 25 in Bhopal that thousands of farmers had accepted the rehabilitation package and only 213 families held out. From the Rs 225 crore package prepared for dam oustees, he said, Rs 183 crore had been distributed.

Officials in the government say the problem here is not the protestors’ demands. It is AAP. Chouhan is not willing to allow Kejriwal’s nascent party to take credit for championing the farmers’ cause since this will create space for it to expand in Madhya Pradesh at BJP’s expense.

This contention appears true given that Chouhan had accepted all the demands of the farmers in September 2012 when they resorted to a similar agitation for 17 days. Back then, over 50 oustees of the Omkareshwar dam project had called off their Jal Satyagrah after the administration constituted a ministerial subcommittee to look into their grievances. On this panel’s recommendations, the government announced a special Rs 225-crore package for the evacuees. The difference, at that time, was that an apolitical Narmada Bachao Andolan was heading the agitation and AAP was not born. The NBA, by no means, posed a political challenge to the ruling party in the state.

Today, what has toughened the Chouhan government’s stand is Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s intervention in the agitation. Kejriwal claims he tried to contact his Madhya Pradesh counterpart repeatedly to sort out the matter but got no response. Chouhan denies receiving any calls from Kejriwal.

The Madhya Pradesh chief minister also cold-shouldered AAP’s emissary Kumar Vishwas when he sought to mediate between the protestors and the state on April 25. Bharatiya Janata Party workers held black flags on the roads as Vishwas made his way to the protest site after discussing their demands with Chouhan. His mission failed miserably.

Diminishing credibility

NBA’s political avatar has jeopardised its fight for the evacuees of the Sardar Sarovar project too. Within a month of Narendra Modi taking over as prime minister, the Narmada Control Authority had unilaterally decided to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam from 121 to 138 metres. Chouhan was not consulted before the decision was taken, but he could not opposite it for fear of antagonising Modi, with whom his relation is not too warm anyway. That decision is likely to cause the submergence of the houses of 45,000 families in 200 villages in Madhya Pradesh.

Months after that call was made, in October, Medha Patkar had protested in front of Chouhan’s residence in Bhopal, but the government ignored her. Since then she is not active in the state.

Patkar was a 30-year-old social activist and researcher when she came to the Narmada Valley in 1985 to study the villages to be submerged by the Sardar Sarovar Dam. As her work progressed, she grew increasingly horrified by the treatment of villagers at the hands of the project authorities. Soon she gave up her survey and joined activists working to secure fair compensation for the dam’s oustees. Over the years, she has travelled by foot, bus and boat throughout the nearly 200-kilometre-long submergence zone.

Agrawal, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, joined Patkar in the early ’90s. Both worked together for a while, but later Agrawal concentrated on Narmada projects in Khandwa district, while Medha focused on the rehabilitation issues of the Sardar Sarovar dam evacuees.

Agrawal says Patkar’s resignation from AAP will not impact the party in Madhya Pradesh since she has not been active in its affairs since her loss in the Lok Sabha election. He claims that his joining the AAP has in no way weakened the Narmada Bachao Andolan. “In fact, our fight under the banner of AAP has become sharper.”

NBA volunteers, have been associated with Patkar, are not so sure. They are hopeful that she will return to Madhya Pradesh and restore credibility to the movement.

“Now that she has said goodbye to politics, we hope Patkar will resuscitate the movement and make it a potent force it used to be,” said Diwan. “She has learnt it the hard way that active politics and credible people’s movements cannot go hand-in-hand.”