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New Delhi: What should a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader be considered for shortlisting the chief ministerial candidates by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah? Of course, there are no fixed criteria. When he chose Bhupendra Patel instead of Vijay Rupani as the CM of Gujarat, it was expected by some in the party or outside. He was a first time MLA and no one in a party full of experienced leaders with administrative experience considered him a contender for the chief minister’s chair.
But this isn’t the first time. Modi and Shah are in for a surprise when it comes to choosing BJP chief ministers.
A look at the background of the 22 chief ministers who have held the coveted chair under the Modi-Shah watch since 2014 brings out some common elements. Based on this, ThePrint analyzes the five boxes that the aspiring CM should check.
grooming by rss
Given the Modi-Shah background in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), it is no surprise when they put a premium on the union of a candidate for the post of CM.
Of the 22 chief ministers he has chosen, 15 have links with the Sangh. Yogi Adityanath of Uttar Pradesh, Himanta Biswa Sarma and Sarbananda Sonowal of Assam, Pema Khandu of Arunachal Pradesh, N. Biren Singh, Karnataka’s Basavaraj Bommai and Gujarat’s Anandiben Patel include both former and current chief ministers with RSS backgrounds.
Adityanath may have no aesthetic in the RSS, but as Mahant of the Gorakhnath Math he shared the broader Hindutva philosophy of the Sangh. He and Anandiben joined the BJP directly, while Sonowal switched to the BJP from the Asom Gana Parishad, and Sarma, Khandu and Biren Singh from the Congress.
Meanwhile, Bommai had entered politics in 2008 as the leader of the Janata Dal. Many of the 22 CMs like Devendra Fadnavis, Jai Ram Thakur and Pushkar Singh Dhami started their politics as student leaders in the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). RSS student wing. Some of them were also part of the BJP’s youth wing – the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha – while old chief ministers like BS Yediyurappa, Raghubar Das and Manohar Lal Khattar have links with the Jana Sangh.
Read also: Gujarat’s ‘Operation Clean’: No minister from Rupani cabinet in CM Patel’s new government
Low-profile without a mass base
Another important aspect of being raised by the Modi-Shah duo is being a low-profile one with no pan-state mass base. Bhupendra Patel is the third first-time MLA, apart from Khattar and Biplab Deb, to be elected as chief ministers. Rupani became an MLA for the first time in 2016, when he was elected as the CM. Ten out of 22 CMs had no ministerial experience when they were promoted to the coveted chair.
While former Karnataka CM Yediyurappa and Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan were mass leaders, their rise during the Modi-Shah era was more of a reward for their role in toppling non-BJP-led governments in their states. . Former chief ministers with mass base like Rajasthan’s Vasundhara Raje and Chhattisgarh’s Raman Singh have been sidelined in the BJP.
44-56 Preferred Age Group
Of the 22 leaders who were promoted as chief ministers, only Five He was above 60 years of age at the time of appointment.
The youngest Khandu was 37 years old, while five CMs (Pushkar Singh Dhami, Biplab Kumar Deb, Fadnavis, Pramod Sawant and Adityanath) were between 40-50 years old. Twelve were between 50-60.
Meanwhile, five people were 60 and above – Manohar Parrikar, Anandiben Patel, Basavaraj Bommai, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Yediyurappa. However, there were political compulsions in all these cases.
For example, Parrikar had to be sent back to Goa as chief minister because he was the only one acceptable to the BJP’s alliance partners after a fractured mandate in the 2017 election. Anandiben was a longtime aide and cabinet colleague of Modi in Gujarat. Khattar, who had crossed 60 within a few months of being made the CM in 2014, also had his chair because of his old association with Modi. Bommai’s rise was driven by the political compulsion to install a Lingayat leader as Yediyurappa’s successor, who also had the administrative acumen and political stature to hold the herd together in Karnataka.
Therefore, the younger a leader is, the more chances he has to be elected by Modi-Shah. According to the age of these 22 CMs the best age group seems to be 44-56. There were six each in the 53-56 and 59-61 age groups and five in the 44-46 age group.
Read also: Eight out of 20 CMs elected by Modi-Shah had to vacate the seat. But it’s not a bad strategy
Personal history with Modi-Shah
Another element of being nominated to the post of chief minister is the long-term association with Modi or Shah. This was demonstrated in the case of Anandiben, who was promoted as the CM of Gujarat in 2014. Before becoming the Chief Minister, he had a long-term relationship with Modi. In fact, he was instrumental in getting him into politics in the 1980s. She became one of the most powerful ministers in CM Modi’s cabinet and he chose her as his successor in Gujarat when he became the Prime Minister.
Like Anandiben, Haryana CM Khattar also long standing association Along with PM Modi, both are from the RSS. In 1996, when Khattar was BJP’s Haryana in-charge, he worked closely with Modi.
when they were rss PreachersModi lived with Khattar during his Haryana tour. Modi had so much faith in Khattar that in the 2014 general elections, the latter was given the charge of 50 wards in the PM’s constituency – Varanasi. Khattar entered the electoral fray in Haryana for the first time later that year and became chief minister.
While Bhupendra Patel may not have had a close association with the Modi-Shah duo, he was Anandiben’s shelter, with Congress leaders in Gujarat even saying that the government would now be ‘remote-controlled’ by him. He has had a cold relationship with Amit Shah, whose protege Rupani replaced him as CM in 2016. In what is being seen as poetic justice, Modi has now brought in his patronage as Rupani’s replacement.
Another Chief Minister who was promoted, who is known to be closely associated with PM Modi, was Raghubar Das, the former CM of Jharkhand. were slaves First non-tribal chief minister of the state.
Himanta Biswa Sarma, who replaced Sonowal as Assam CM, was Shah’s point person in the northeast.
party loyalty or political utility
Though several political parties have become BJP chief ministers, what is clear in the Modi-Shah choice of chief ministers is that they have placed a premium on leaders’ loyalty to the BJP and their grassroots engagement.
Bhupendra Patel and Rupani started out as municipal councillors, while Devendra Fadnavis, the former chief minister of Maharashtra. youngest city councilor He was the Mayor of Nagpur Municipal Corporation at the age of 22, and even before being elected to the State Legislative Assembly.
Former Chief Minister of Uttarakhand before being elected MLA in 2002 Trivendra Singh Rawat He was the organization secretary of BJP Uttarakhand in 1997 and held this post for five years.
If some political party became the chief minister, it was because of their imperative in BJP’s plans. For example, Hemant is indispensable to the party in Assam.
Arunachal CM Pema Khandu (who had earlier switched from Congress to the People’s Party of Arunachal Pradesh) switched to the BJP in 2016 along with 36 other MLAs, taking the saffron party’s strength to 45 in the 60-member assembly in the state. Similarly, Bommai, who had joined the BJP in 2008, needed to bring stability after Yeddyurappa’s expulsion.
However, it is difficult for BJP leaders who have left the party to regain the confidence of Modi-Shah. For example, Gordhan Zadafiya, aspiring to become chief minister, had a long association with the RSS-affiliated Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and was Minister of State for Home in Gujarat in 2001–2002. He was seen as a strong contender to replace Rupani but could not do so. He had rebelled against the party and formed his own organization before returning to the BJP.
Yediyurappa had also quit the BJP and was instrumental in the party’s defeat in 2013, but Modi brought him back to the party as there was no one else in Karnataka with that kind of support base.
(Edited by Neha Mahajan)
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