Coronavirus and
Operation 'Lotus'
N D Sharma
Sanchi, the government run milk
federation was supplying
chemical laced adulterated milk
to its consumers
The ouster of the
Congress government of
Kamal Nath in Madhya
Pradesh had two bad
consequences. The only
commendable thing the
government had done during its 14-
month existence was to launch a
relentless "war" against food item
adulterators and land mafia.
Many
multi-storey buildings were razed to
the ground across the State and
hundreds of acres of encroached
land was recovered by the
government. At the same time, the
people of the State were horrified
(though not horrified enough to rise
in collective rebellion against the
Kamal Nath
system) to know that the Stateowned
Cooperative Dairy Federation
had been supplying milk adulterated
with urea. The Federation supplies
milk and milk products under the
brand name of "Sanchi". The
adulterators and land-grabbers took
a sigh of relief when the government
fell. Second, and more disastrous, was
the infiltration of coronavirus which
could be directly related to the
developments leading to the change
of government. Kamal Nath – and
some others also -- have expressed
the view that the Modi government
delayed ordering lockdown to fight
the coronavirus because he was
more interested and involved in
toppling the Congress government in
Madhya Pradesh. At least in the case
of Madhya Pradesh, this definitely
appears so.
Jyotiraditya Scindia
Coronavirus had entered India by the last week of January. On January
26, a doctor in Jaipur was suspected
infected with coronavirus and the
State's Health Minister had got him
admitted to the hospital. Two days
later, a medical student reached
Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh from
Wuhan in China and he was
admitted to a hospital with
suspected coronavirus symptoms.
Within a week several persons,
mostly medical students having
returned from China, were spotted
with coronavirus symptoms in
various parts of the country: Kerala
January 30 and February 2;
Dehradun January 30; Indore and
Khargone in Madhya Pradesh
January 31 and February 2; Orissa
January 31; Chhattisgarh February 3;
Haryana February 4 and 6. It went on
like this.
The virus had become quite
pervasive in February. The BJP was
said to have started working on
disgruntled Congress leader
Jyotiraditya Scindia a few months
earlier and the tense relationship
between Scindia and Chief Minister
Kamal Nath had reached a critical point amidst reports of Scindia's
hobnobbing with the BJP leaders. In
mid-February (on February 14 to be
precise) Scindia accused the Kamal
Nath government of not fulfilling the
election promises contained in the
party's manifesto. He held out the
threat that if the government did not
fulfil the promises, he would have to
take to the streets ("sadak par
utarana padega), to which Kamal
Digvijaya Singh
Nath responded: "To utar jaayen"
(Ok, go ahead). Former Chief
Minister Digvijaya Singh boarded the
Dakshin Express from New Delhi in
the night of February 23 and, getting
down at Dabra, drove to Guna
where, it was said, a closed-door
meeting was scheduled between
Scindia and him to sort out the
differences. But the two met only on the road, exchanged some
pleasantries and went their different
ways. The expected closed-door
meeting between the two did not
take place.
Tulsi silawat
While the coronavirus was
spreading out in Madhya Pradesh –
and the country --- the BJP was
chalking out its strategy to engineer
defection of Congress MLAs loyal to
Scindia and bring down the Kamal
Nath government. Kamal Nath and
his few trusted lieutenants were
watching the moves of Scindia and
his followers. Governance was kept
in abeyance as the politicised
bureaucracy of the State was
interested more in their future in
case of a change of government than
in administration. Moreover, Health
Minister Tulsi silawat belonged to
the Scindia group and almost lost
interest in the working of his
department.
By the end of February the virus
had taken deep roots in the country.
The BJP leadership was, however, in
no mood to abandon "operation
lotus" halfway. According to one
version, the top BJP leadership was
hoping that with the defection of Scindia and the 20-odd MLAs of his
camp, the Congress government
would immediately collapse and BJP government would be installed. They
did not expect that Kamal Nath
would be able to prolong it so much.
Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan with Narottam Mishra
The stalemate would have lasted
longer but for the unusual interest of
the Supreme Court in ordering a
trust vote without going into the root
cause of the problem if it was all
right for the opposition party to keep
under its hold a sufficient number of
the ruling party MLAs and ask for the trust vote. As the Supreme Court had
ordered trust vote proceedings to be
completed by 5 PM on March 20,
Kamal Nath resigned an hour before
the Assembly session was due to
commence. With 20-odd MLAs
under BJP control in Bengaluru, he
had no chance of winning the trust
vote.
Narendra Singh Tomar
The decision of Kamal Nath to
resign without facing the Assembly
must have taken BJP by surprise
because the party could not
immediately push forward a leader
to be sworn in as Chief Minister.
While former Chief Minister Shivraj
Singh Chouhan was a strong
contender for the post, the top leadership was reported to be
inclined to give the post to Union
Minister Narendra Singh Tomar.
Former Health and Public Relations
Minister Narottam Mishra was floating his own name through his
friends in the media. In the midst of
this tussle, Chouhan invited all BJP
MLAs for dinner on March 21. He
was, however, made to cancel the
dinner by the party high command
because of, it was said, coronavirus.
A meeting of the BJP Legislature
Party was eventually scheduled for
March 24 to elect the leader. The number of the virus-affected people
was steadily going up in the country
and in Madhya Pradesh.
Then something happened on
March 23. Prime Minister Narendra
The prolonged political
uncertainty in the State
had left the Health
Department in a shambles.
There was no protective
equipment for the health
workers and others
engaged in containing the
virus and no protocol in
force. Nearly 80 Health
Department personnel,
starting from Principal
Secretary Pallavi Jain Govil
downwards, and dozens of
police personnel were
infected by the virus. At
the time of writing (April
20), Madhya Pradesh
accounted for 1485
confirmed cases of Covid-
19 and 76 deaths, Indore
being the worst affected
with 897 positive cases
and 52 deaths.
Modi was said to have asked
Chouhan to get immediately sworn
in as Chief Minister. Following his
talks with the Prime Minister a few
times, the Chouhan camp informed
media persons that he would take
the oath at 7 PM. Later it was made
to 9 PM. He was elected leader at the
hurriedly called meeting of the BJP
legislators (coronavirus
notwithstanding) around six PM and
was sworn in at Raj Bhavan at 9 PM.
On March 24, he won the trust vote
in the (again) hurriedly convened
Assembly sitting; the Congress MLAs
boycotted it. The same night the
Union Government announced the countrywide three-week lockdown.
The number of coronavirus cases in
the country had by then reached
519.
The prolonged political
uncertainty in the State had left the
Health Department in a shambles.
There was no protective equipment
for the health workers and others
engaged in containing the virus and
no protocol in force.
Nearly 80
Health Department personnel,
starting from Principal Secretary
Pallavi Jain Govil downwards, and
dozens of police personnel were
infected by the virus. At the time of
writing (April 20), Madhya Pradesh
accounted for 1485 confirmed cases
of Covid-19 and 76 deaths, Indore
being the worst affected with 897
positive cases and 52 deaths.
Vivek Tankha and Kapil Sibal
The BJP ousted the Congress
government but was not able to
constitute a Council of Ministers.
The
reason is said to be the party's
inability to
select from the
large number of
aspirants.
The
22 ex-Congress
MLAs, who had
defected to the
BJP along with
Scindia, have
made the
c a b i n e t
formation more
difficult. Scindia,
who met Home Minister Amit Shah
and BJP President J P Nadda in this
connection, was said to have insisted
on inclusion in the cabinet of all the
six ex-MLAs who were members of
the Kamal Nath cabinet. The BJP was
said to be prepared to adjust only a
couple of them for the time being.
As the stalemate continued, the
BJP high command constituted what
it called the Task Force to aid and
advise Chief Minister Chouhan.
State
BJP president V D Sharma is the
convener of this extra-constitutional
body. Its members include Chief
Minister Chouhan; Suhas Bhagat,
State BJP General Secretary
(Organisation), who has been deputed by RSS to the BJP; BJP's
National General Secretary Kailash
Vijayvargiya; former State BJP
president Rakesh Singh, MP; Gopal
Bhargava, who was a minister in the
previous Chouhan government and
Leader of Opposition during the
Congress government of Kamal
Nath; Narottam Mishra, Rajendra
Shukla, Meena Singh, Tulsi Silawat
and Jagdish Devda, all former
ministers. Tulsi Silawat was Health
Minister in the Kamal Nath
government and was one of the 22
Congress MLAs who had gone out of
the Congress along with Jyotiraditya
Scindhia.
In a surprise development , Chief
Minister Chouhan constituted a fivemember
cabinet on April 21 -- 29
days after he was sworn in as Chief
Minister. Three of them, Narottam
Mishra, Kamal Patel and Meena
Singh were members of the last
Chouhan cabinet. Tulsi Silawat and Govind Rajput belong to Scindia
group and were members of Kamal
Nath's cabinet. They will have to get
elected to the Assembly within six
months.
Lawyers and Congress members
of Rajya Sabha Kapil Sibal and Vivek
Tankha had writted on April 20 a
joint letter to the President saying
that all the decisions taken by
Shivraj Singh Chouhan without a
Council of Ministers violated
provisions of the Constitution. They
had urged the President to intervene
so that a Council of Ministers was
immediately constituted and the
decisions already taken ratified by
the Council of Ministers.