Taking a jibe at Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s announcement that the Madhya Pradesh Government will run its administration from village ‘chaupals’ instead of air-conditioned secretariat, the State Congress has demanded CM’s resignation.

Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee spokesperson Dipti Singh in a statement here on Wednesday said, “If the Chief Minister has to do the work of Sarpanch then he should resign and become sarpanch. If you (Chouhan) have to run the Government from the village chaupals then you should immediately resign and become sarpanch instead of Chief Minister, but before that the Chief Minister should tell the people of the State that why he curtailed the powers of Panchayats, Janpad and district Panchayat representatives.”

Dipti Singh further said that why the Panchayti Raj members are agitating and why the agitating members have been sent to jail. If this decision was to be implemented again then why the district government system established by the erstwhile Digvijay Singh led Congress government of the state was finished this when the then Madhya Pradesh’s Panchayti Raj system was adopted by other states also. But the Shivraj Singh Chouhan Government by dissolving the earlier Panchayti Raj system curtailed the rights of Panchayats and made them lame, she added.

She said that the chief minister who is in office since over ten years started missing villages and chaupals now all of a sudden. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that talks of villages, poor and farmers could not develop rural areas despite being in power for over twelve years. This reflects that the BJP government has failed on all fronts, she added. She said that the farmer’s son chief minister understood the importance of villages and chaupals after ten years of holding the important office of CM this when the people started defeating BJP from parliamentary elections to local body elections.