Absence of national leaders from Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s Jan Ashirwad Yatra that commenced from the temple town Ujjain on Monday indicated that the senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are afraid of Gujarat Chief Minister and party’s election campaign committee chairman Narendra Modi and thus did not wish to lock horns with him.
Modi was left out of the publicity material and campaign of Chouhan’s Yatra for reasons better known to the campaign designers that composed of Chouhan’s close confidantes.
Observing Chouhan’s defiant mood over NaMo and Gujarat Chief Minister’s stature and growing clout over the party the bigwigs thought it better to keep away from the show despite providing their consent earlier.
Though everyone who missed the big occasion for Chouhan and the party that is desperate to return to power for the third consecutive term in the State have their own reasons for keeping off, but the fact remain that all the bigwigs made distance from the all important programme as NaMo was completely ignored from the publicity material of the Jan Ashirwad Yatra. The reason being obvious that Chouhan is also a prime ministerial contender and that is why he does not want to entertain his competitor within the party to flex his arms in his (Chouhan’s) territory.
Main among those who were supposed to bless Chouhan and missed out at the last moment when he embarked upon a 60 day Yatra covering over 8,000 kilometers in 229 of the total 230 assembly constituencies of the State ahead of the Assembly elections scheduled later in the year, were leader of Opposition in the lok Sabha and MP from Vidisha, Sushma Swaraj and national general secretary in-charge for State Ananth Kumar besides veteran lK Advani, who has missed the first event of Chouhan ever since he assumed the office of the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh.
Chouhan’s remarks before the launch of his road-show could not have helped the party’s efforts to dispel the perception of an undercurrent of tension between the two saffron satraps. The Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister pointedly tried to ignore Modi’s new stature as party’s fresh mascot. “lK Advani is our supreme leader. He and Atal Bihari Vajpayee are respected by all in the party. Advani is not just my mentor. He has mentored many others like me,” said Chouhan.
Though Chouhan tried to downplay the issue when reporters asked him about NaMo missing from publicity material by answering that it is a local issue and that is why national leaders have been avoided in publicity campaign. Asked whether Modi would be invited to join the Jan Ashirwad Yatra, Chouhan abruptly said, “All central leaders will come for the concluding ceremony in Bhopal on September 25.”