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Deepak Tiwari
Deepak Tiwari

Intent or symbolism?

Not a rubber stamp: Anandiben hits the ground running as new MP Guv

anandiben-shivraj-swearing-in-pti Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan greeting Anandiben Patel at her swearing-in ceremony | PTI

After being sworn in as the new governor of Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday, 76-year-old former Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel gave ample indications that she is not going to be a ‘rubber stamp’ representative of the Union Government.

Immediately after taking oath, she asked the Raj Bhawan principal secretary to computerise the movement of files instead of keeping records in manual registers and directed vice-chancellors to prepare academic calendars.

Earlier, she travelled in a bus instead of taking a state aircraft from Ahmedabad to Bhopal. She even refused to sit in the official Raj Bhawan car at the Madhya Pradesh border in Jhabua when the protocol officers went to receive her.

Before coming to Bhopal, she stopped at Ujjain to pray at the Lord Mahakal temple. Her decision to come by bus and create ample opportunities for the media to report about her had made political analysts believe that she is not going to be a rubber stamp governor.

Senior television journalist Brajesh Rajput says, “All the indications given by the former Gujarat chief minister shows that she will be a proactive governor not like the previous ones.” The previous governor, Ram Naresh Yadav, became a big embarrassment for the Congress after he was made one of the accused in the infamous Vyapam recruitment scam.

The post of governor in the state was lying effectively vacant since the Congress-appointed Yadav retired from the gubernatorial post in in September 2016 and the additional charge of governor was held by Om Prakash Kohli, the Gujarat governor. It was after 16 months that the state got a full-time governor.

Patel, who was chief minister of Gujarat from 2014, when incumbent Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister, to August 2016, is known to be very close to Modi but has frayed ties with BJP president Amit Shah.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan too does share a very good rapport with Amit Shah. However, Chouhan before 2014 was pitted as a prime ministerial candidate, apart from Modi, by a section of the BJP.

Patel had not contested the recent Assembly polls in Gujarat, giving way to rumours that she was unhappy with the BJP high command.

Patel is the second woman governor of Madhya Pradesh after Sarla Grewal, a retired IAS officer who served in the PMO of Rajiv Gandhi.

Known for her strict administrative practices, Patel, after taking oath, visited an anganwadi centre and Bal Niketan and later went to the Birla Mandir with her family members in the evening.

Her visit to the two welfare centres was seen as a message to the state government that she will keep an eye on the functioning of the government where polls are due in the year-end.

Earlier, her oath-taking ceremony was attended by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, MP Assembly Speaker Sitasharan Sharma, Chief Minister Chouhan and a host of his cabinet ministers and leader of opposition Ajay Singh.

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