Politics in Madhya Pradesh got a definite musical touch on Wednesday as Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya sang duets together at a Bhutta (corn) party dinner hosted by the latter in Bhopal.
The dinner party was also attended by ex-chief minister and MP Congress chief Kamal Nath among other MLAs and BJP ministers.
The highlight of the evening was, however, the duet musical session of Chouhan and Vijayvargiya. Among the songs was the iconic Bollywood song of friendship yeh dosti hum nahi todenge (we will never break this friendship) of the 1970s blockbuster Sholay. Also, the duo sang the popular number humey tumse pyaar kitna yeh hum nahi jaantey (my extent of love for you, even I don’t know) from the 1981 movie Kudrat.
Later, both Chouhan and Vijayvargiya shared the videos of them singing yeh dosti hum nahi todenge hand-in-hand, on their respective Twitter handles.
Chouhan wrote a Sanskrit couplet with the video that means “Sandalwood is considered the coolest thing in the world; moon is cooler than sandalwood. But the association of good friends is cooler than both sandalwood and moon.”
Vijayvargiya’s tweet gave better context to the duet singing. “Used to sing this song (together) while working for the (BJP) Yuva Morcha; memories were freshened as soon as (we) sang this song at Bhutta party in Bhopal today,” he said.
However, the choice of the songs was looked upon as having special political meaning in the present context. There have been repeated rumours during the past few months about the likelihood of a change of guard in Madhya Pradesh, and Vijayvarigya is considered to be one of the top contenders for the chief minister’s post.
His one-to-one meetings with other key leaders from Madhya Pradesh about two months ago had led to a lot of speculation, but Vijayvargiya has been maintaining that Chouhan would continue to be the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh for now.
Even on Tuesday, when he visited Bhopal after a gap of about two months, Vijayvarigya met some leaders—ministers Kamal Patel, Arvind Singh Bhadoria and Inder Singh Parmar and former minister Gaurishankar Shejwar—all considered to be from the camp opposing Chouhan. The national general secretary, however, also met Chouhan in the afternoon at his official residence.
Speaking to the media earlier during the day, Vijayvargiya reiterated that Chouhan will continue to be the chief minister as the recent floods in the state had again shown how sensitive Chouhan was as a chief minister. However, he also made a cryptic comment, saying that when he had news to give, he will give ‘full-page’ news, but for now, the mediapersons should make do with two-line news.
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The Congress did not let the opportunity to take a dig slip. Party spokesman Narendra Saluja tweeted the video of the yeh dosti hum nahi todenge song by the duo saying “Shivraj ji and Kailash ji have been singing this song together in public for the past several years. Shivraj ji sings this song hand-in-hand (with Vijayvargiya), but never fails to play tricks behind the curtain. Both sing kuchh bhi ho jaye ab tumhe nahi chhorenge (whatever it may be, I won’t spare you) behind the curtains.”
He also tweeted another video of Chouhan and Vijayvargiya singing hume tumse pyaar… with a caption in Hindi spoofing the original song. Saluja said that everyone knew how much (they) loved each other and how much they did for each other.
