Digvijaya Singh rakes up CM change in Madhya Pradesh, names Sharma and Patel

Rajya Sabha member Digvijaya Singh has stirred politics over rumoured change of chief minister in Madhya Pradesh, tweeting to name BJP state president Vishnu Dutt Sharma and Union minister Prahlad Patel as the only two contenders and alluding that Shivraj Singh Chouhan was on his way out.

Singh had earlier tweeted on Sunday to say that the BJP, (PM Narendra) Modi and (home minister Amit) Shah were changing their chief ministers and this had led to heightening of aspirations of some MP BJP leaders. He had also asked people to guess about the chief ministerial contenders in MP BJP, failing which he would give out the list on Monday.

True to his word, on Monday, Singh tweeted: “Now only two MP BJP leaders are in the race for being chief minister – Modiji’s candidate Prahlad Patel and Sangh (RSS) candidate V.D. Sharma; my sympathies with other contenders.” Alluding to CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Singh also said that he was certainly on his way out.

Though he did not name the other contenders, speculations were high that he meant BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya and state home minister Narottam Mishra, whose names have time and again appeared as probable candidates for CM post in MP.

Last month, a spate of one-to-one closed door meetings between several senior BJP leaders including Sharma, Patel, Mishra and Vijayvargiya had led to rumours regarding some plan afoot to dislodge Chouhan as CM. These rumours were denied by the leaders.

Singh’s tweet also has the context to the speculations regarding change of guard in BJP-ruled Karnataka after second change of chief minister in Uttarakhand within four months.

On Singh’s Sunday tweet, Chouhan had reacted by asking whether his (Singh’s) comments merited any reaction. But his Monday tweet certainly stirred politics with BJP leaders reacting to it.

BJP state president Sharma tweeted: “The credit of dislodging Kamal Nath government goes to you and you are proud of this. But this is Congress culture and not that of BJP. We are proud of our government led by Shivraj ji and moving on the path of people’s welfare. Your misdeeds have been prevented and therefore it is natural for you to feel pain.”

In another tweet, Sharma took a dig at Congress, saying there were only two contenders in the race for Congress national president post – Sonia Gandhi’s candidate Rahul Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi’s candidate Sonia Gandhi and that his sympathies were with all other aspirants.

Meanwhile, Home Minister Narottam Mishra said that Digvijaya Singh should rather ponder over whether Kamal Nath will continue on two posts (state Congress chief and leader of opposition) and also on the fact that Congress has not been able to elect its national president and make do with an interim president.