Between Id-Ul-Zuha and Moharram came the controversy over the BJP government’s decision to organise a surya namaskar and pranayam programme across schools and colleges in Madhya Pradesh. The minority community’s opposition to the state-sponsored event and a call to boycott the programme en mass did not help improve the rift.

So disturbed governor Balram Jakhar was by the turn of events that he called up DGP A R Pawar and asked him to improve the law and order situation in the state. The government was in two minds about the worsening communal situation: whether to call it a conspiracy to malign the state or to describe the events purely in policing terms as unrelated sporadic incidents of violence.

Minister of state for home Nagendra Singh chose the latter and said the government would come down heavily on elements bent on creating disturbances, without clarifying who he thought was behind it. The lawlessness has coincided with the time when the government is seriously doing its bit to attract investors to a state that simply did not figure in their scheme of things before. Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was so candid about the investors’ lack of interest in the central Indian state that he admitted after a discussion with potential investors in Khajuraho that they said, “We didn’t know we could invest in Madhya Pradesh.”

Apart from Bijli-Sadak-Pani issues that cost the previous Congress government dearly, helping the BJP’s cause in the last Assembly elections was saffron organisations like Bajrang Dal, VHP and Hindu Jagaran Manch. Leading the BJP campaign then was Uma Bharati, a favourite of the Hindu organisations. The leader is now out in the cold.

... contd.