The Art of Survival ; After a Shaky Start and a Few Faux Pas, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan Appears to Have Found His Footing with a Few Tough Decisions

Summary

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Few chief ministers have entered office with the odds so heavily stacked against them. Not only was there the daunting challenge of emerging from the long shadow cast by former chief minister Uma Bharati but also a series of crises that would have tested a far more experienced politician. For Shivraj Singh Chauhan, it has been baptism by fire. Barely a year in the chief minister's chair and he has been faced with a storm of protest and accusations of shielding the guilty in the politically-charged murder of Ujjain college professor S.K. Sabharwal, followed by an equally sensitive controversy over the government allowing civil servants to attend rss shakhas, the inept handling of flood relief operations, worsening law and order situation, and then his battle with Governor Balram Jakhar over university reforms.

It is ironical that the biggest challenges he is facing are related to the university issues but Chauhan has shown that he is fast learning the art of political survival. Not many gave him a second chance when he emerged as the BJP's surprise choice as chief minister barely a year after he became the party's state president, and that too in the boiling political cauldron following Bharati's exit. A man given to distended discourses on his vision at the beginning of his stint, he is now curt with bureaucrats to the point of being dismissive and is one of the few chief ministers who shuns durbars and hangers-on or sycophants. He has shown the courage to take swift action against government servants, no matter how senior or powerful, in the process becoming perhaps the first chief minister to show the door to a chief secretary and a director- general of police (DGP) in less than a year because they didn't measure up to his expectations. DGP Swaraj Puri was recently axed after an fir was lodged against him for adopting unfair means to get his son admitted to an engineering college in Indore. Last week Chauhan was swift in dismissing the sp and district magistrate of Datia after a flash flood tragedy which left 10 people dead.

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The Art of Survival ; After a Shaky Start and a Few Faux Pas, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan Appears to Have Found His Footing with a Few Tough Decisions

He was under pressure from the Congress when it showed signs of revival post-Ujjain. As television clippings showed the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) leaders threatening professors in Ujjain over st...

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