As if there was not enough confusion in the Congress in Madhya Pradesh already, the State's Mahila Congress president Shobha Ojha has added to it by suggesting publicly that if the Congress wins in the November Assembly elections – of which she has no doubt that it will win --- the party should go for a woman chief minister. She also named the deserving candidate: Jamuna Devi, who is at present the Leader of Opposition in the Assembly.

     Few inside the party and outside will dispute, publicly at least, Ojha's contention. Jamuna Devi, who is also a tribal, has been an MLA or MP since 1952 and has served as one of the two deputy chief ministers in the Digvijay Singh government. As the Leader of Opposition during the past four years, she has kept the BJP and its government constantly under pressure by ruthlessly exposing its misdeeds, often on her own without any logistic support from the organisation or other party leaders.

     But Jamuna Devi herself has a cynical view of the party leaders' attitude and her cynicism is not without basis. Only the upper castes, particularly the Brahmans and the Rajputs, have dominated the political scene in Madhya Pradesh. Those belonging to the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes were tolerated because they represented a sizeable vote bank. Later on, vote bank status of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) was also recognised by the professional (call them exploitative, if you so feel) politicians. Conscious efforts were, however, made to see that the STs, SCs, or OBCs, never reached the top positions. Jamuna Devi has no doubt that she was allowed to become the Leader of Opposition not in recognition of her long political career but because of the peculiar circumstances prevailing in the State following the Uma Bharati-led BJP's resounding victory in the 2003 elections.

     Jamuna Devi's apprehensions may not altogether be misplaced. PCC president Suresh Pachauri is already a strong contender for the chief minister's post, so is Congress Campaign Committee chairman Ajay Singh (Rahul Bhaiya). The latter has the support of the powerful Rajput lobby led by Arjun Singh and Digvijay Singh. Pachauri is not known to have cultivated a powerful lobby to help him. So he is banking upon whatever goodwill he might have created at 10, Janpath, during his long years in Delhi as Rajya Sabha member and as a Minister of State in the Manmohan Singh government.

     Shobha Ojha's observation has stirred a hornet's nest in the Congress. Both Pachauri and Ajay Singh have been evading the issue, taking refuge under the subterfuge that it is not the Congress tradition to project the chief minister before the elections. Ojha's assertion is all the more intriguing because she is known to belong to the Pachauri camp.

     While the Congress is yet to put its house in order, the BJP is showing signs of having acquired new vigour, particularly after its victory in the Betul Lok Sabha by-election. It has started making preparations for the elections at different levels. Strategy meetings are being organised in which senior party leaders are invited. The loquacious Venkaiah Naidu has been visiting Bhopal to guide them. Shivraj Singh Chauhan has been carving out new districts and new tehsils and announcing new schemes which he tells the people will take the State forward on the path to rapid progress.

     Simultaneously, the chief minister has started large-scale readjustments of IAS and IPS officers. He shifted Director-General of Police A.R.Pawar prematurely and made S.K.Raut (who was head of the Economic Offences Wing) the Madhya Pradesh police chief. Pawar was probably the most pliant police chief a BJP chief minister could have dreamt of as he had allowed the police force to become subservient to the Bajrang Dal and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) activists. The reason for his removal is said to be that he is due to retire when the Election Commission's Model Code of Conduct will be in force in the State and Election Commission may ask the State government for a panel of names to select the new DGP from. Within hours after taking charge as the new DGP, S.K.Raut started singing the BJP tune, by emphasising the necessity of having POTA-like law in the State.

       Shivraj Singh Chauhan has simultaneously opened a vigorous front against the Centre castigating it for all the real or imaginable ills of the State. He observed a 24-hour hunger strike in protest against what he called the step-motherly attitude of the Centre towards Madhya Pradesh. A Constitutional authority agitating against another Constitutional authority was unheard of in this country till about a decade ago. Even the BJP considered such an action by a minister or chief minister as highly improper.

       There is at least one instance when Uma Bharati, then Union Minister of State for Tourism, was admonished by none other than the BJP's present prime ministerial candidate. In the Congress regime of Digvijay Singh, the Rapid Action Force (RAF) was used to send the BJP corporators to hospital with bloodied injuries so that the Congress members of Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC), who were in an awful minority, could elect their own Corporation council chairman. The BJP started dharna and resorted to chakka jam in protest. Uma Bharati flew in from New Delhi and went from the airport straight to the dharna site and joined the agitation.

       As soon as Lal Krishna Advani, then home minister, came to know of this, he called up Uma Bharati and chastised her for forgetting her position as a Minister of the Union. Uma was told categorically that she had committed an impropriety by joining the agitation against the State government while remaining a minister herself. It goes to Uma Bharati's credit that she faxed her resignation letter from the Union Council of Ministers to then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee without wasting any time.

       But Advani did not tell Chauhan that he was committing an impropriety by agitating against the Centre while remaining the chief minister. Is it a sign of his weakening hold on the party satraps or has he made up his mind to make all sorts of compromises in order to attain his coveted goal? As for the Congress response to Chauhan's hunger strike? Suresh Pachauri observed a 24-hour hunger strike in protest against the "misdeeds" of the State government. That's apparently how the Congress plans to beat the BJP in the November Assembly elections.