PLAYING THE OBC CARD

MOHAN YADAV, THE BJP LEADERSHIP'S PICK FOR THE TOP POST IN MP, TICKS THE RIGHT BOXES IN THE 2024 GENERAL ELECTION PUSH

- RAHUL NORONHA

At the Gau Ghat on the banks of the Kshipra in Ujjain, it was fairly common till two decades ago to see a muscular man braving the currents in the river. On December 11, that swimmer, Mohan Yadav, was elected chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, a decision that truly went against the tide given that he was pitted against the who’s who of BJP politics in the state.

On the evening of December 11, party MLAs were summoned to the BJP state office in Bhopal, currently functioning temporarily out of an old state road transport corporation building. Present there were Haryana chief minister M.L. Khattar, the party’s OBC Morcha chief K. Laxman, and party secretary Asha Lakra as observers. As the old and the new mingled, no one was impervious to the reason they were there—to elect a new chief minister for the state. After the perfunctory registrations and group photo, former CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan proposed Yadav’s name as the next chief minister. Eight other leaders supported the proposal. Seated towards the back of the hall, Chouhan had to ask Yadav to stand up and come up front. It marked the end of an era in BJP politics in MP, and the beginning of a new one. “It is only the BJP that gives such a big responsibility to a small worker like me. I am grateful for this new responsibility,” Yadav told the media waiting outside.

Born in 1965 in Ujjain, Yadav is a dyed-in-the-wool BJP worker—which matters in a state like MP where a decent number of party MLAs and leaders have come from the Congress ranks. He cut his teeth in student politics, and was president at the Madhav Science College in Ujjain, his alma mater. In 1997, he became a member of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha state executive, marking his entry into party politics.