Budhni or Chhindwara: Which model will people vote for in Madhya Pradesh?

Budhni or Chhindwara – Which model of development will people vote for? As the electoral battle for Madhya Pradesh heats up, ET visits the constituencies represented by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and the Congress challenger Kamal Nath.

In one corner in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh is Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who is seeking a fourth successive term in office. In the other, veteran Congress leader Kamal Nath has positioned himself as the challenger after being appointed as the president of the party’s state unit. As the campaign heats up, a tussle seems to be brewing in their respective backyards over which constituency represents a more effective model of development.

The BJP claims the development seen in Kamal Nath’s nine-term parliamentary constituency, Chhindwara, has little to do with him and has been the result of the Shivraj Chouhan government’s work in the past 15 years. At stake are seven assembly seats in Chhindwara, of which the BJP holds four. The Congress, in turn, aims to “expose” the alleged lack of development in Chouhan’s three-time assembly constituency and native town, Budhni, near Bhopal to impress upon voters that the fruits of development have not reached the CM’s own hometown, let alone the whole state.

BUDHNI: CM’s hometown, constituency for 12 years
“Pachaas saal se vikas nahin hua thha… ab ja ke kuchh hua hai. Bhopal to rajdhani thhi par hamare gaon bhi ab rajdhani ho gaye hain (No development had happened for 50 years… now finally something has happened. Bhopal has been the state capital, but now our villages are like the capital too),” said one among a group of villagers in Bandra Bhan, sitting beside the Narmada river that flows near this village in Budhni tehsil.

Locals Laxman Singh, the village sarpanch, Nirmal Kumar and Rabi Lal Meena said there was a time when boats were used to cross the Narmada and reach their village. “Till Shivraj Singh Chouhan became our MLA and the CM in 2006, even a car could not reach here. Such was the state of roads,” said Kumar. Now, he said, Budhni gets round-the-clock electricity, just one of the many signs that the “CM has delivered”.

About 15 kilometres away, Chouhan’s native village of Jait has a three-km concrete road branching out to it from a well-paved state highway leading to it from Budhni. A second road of 3.5 km is also being built to the small Jait village from the state highway. Chouhan’s ancestral home here lies locked but villagers speak fondly of him. Jait also has the Narmada flowing right next to it, hoardings of CM’s new ‘Sambhal Scheme’ dot its entry points and slogans of his key schemes can be seen from afar on walls of the houses. The nearly 50-km long national highway to Budhni from Bhopal is being widened at a hectic pace – it could well be completed before the state assembly polls later this year.


The Congress, however, is not impressed. The party plans to come out with a report card on Budhni to buttress its claim of lack of development, and project it to show how the state remains backward. Congress campaign committee chief Jyotiraditya Scindia was in Budhni earlier this month for this exercise. Days later, on August 23, Chouhan was on a visit to Budhni when in an embarrassment to the government, people in village Narayanpur near Jait stopped his car and protested that rampant illegal sand mining was on in the area right under the nose of the police and the administration and trucks with sand were speeding all day through their village and damaging their crops.

“The CM was shocked on learning this and promised quick action. We hear that the next day itself, over a dozen trucks were seized by police and cops were posted near the Narmada to check mining. But why was it happening so far? No one listened to us till we stopped the chief minister’s car,” said a villager in Narayanpur, speaking strictly on condition of anonymity.

Chouhan has rarely campaigned in Budhni, having left the task to his wife Sadhna Singh. This time, his son, Kartikeya Chouhan, is also campaigning for him. In the 2013 assembly polls, Chouhan also contested from Vidisha (his former Lok Sabha constituency) besides Budhni; he won both seats and chose to retain Budhni. “Let’s see if he contests or gives away Budhni seat to one of his family members this time. In any event we will put up a strong candidate,” said a senior Congress leader, who did not wish to be identified.

CHHINDWARA: Kamal Nath’s backyard for 36 years
Near the Maharashtra border, Chhindwara is an unquestioned bastion of its nine-time MP, Kamal Nath. He has built a big Hanuman temple here, along with skill-training institutes; the constituency has a network of three national highways including a 56-km-long Ring Road, call centres, a model railway station and even an air strip which has so far served only Nath’s aircraft and chopper. He is projecting his ‘Chhindwara model of development’ in this election campaign that he says he will bring to the entire state if the Congress comes to power.

But the BJP has taken on Nath for the first time, saying that a new medical college being built in Chhindwara, much like many other projects, are courtesy of the BJP state government rather than the local MP. Chief Minister Chouhan said so to ET in an interview earlier this week.



BJP leaders in Chhindwara reel out facts they say many gloss over here. “There are seven assembly constituencies in Chhindwara Lok Sabha constituency. Four of these assemblies are held by the BJP – including the Chhindwara assembly seat. We have a target of winning all seven assembly seats here this time by telling the people that it is the BJP which has brought development here, not Nath,” said the MLA from Chhindwara, BJP’s Chaudhary Chandrabhan Singh.

The CM is expected to visit Chhindwara this month as part of his ongoing Jan Ashirwad Yatra and an aggressive campaign is in the works to put pressure on Nath, whose party is depending on him to pull his weight in all seven seats here, especially since he is the state Congress president now and also the party’s de-facto CM face.


“Nath is unbeatable in a parliamentary election. He has a lot of goodwill here. But a state assembly poll is different – we vote for the CM then,” said Rishiraj Singh, a resident of Chhindwara who has seen many elections in the past three decades. This seems true of the Chhindwara assembly constituency, where Nath’s key aide, BJP’s Chaudhary, and Deepak Saxena of the Congress, have taken turns to win since 1990. Both candidates may square off yet again in the upcoming assembly polls.

The BJP has a list ready to tell the people – of how Navodaya and Kendriya Vidyalayas have been brought to Chhindwara by the state government as well as its decision to upgrade Chhindwara from a Nagar Palika to a Nagar Nigam. Those close to Nath dismiss this. “With Nath as Congress state president now, we aim to win all seven assembly seats here. The wave will start from Chhindwara for the Congress to sweep the whole state,” said one of Nath’s aides.

In this election, the passage to Bhopal clearly runs through Budhni and Chhindwara.