The Madhya Pradesh unit of the BJP made Mohan Yadav the next chief minister of the state today.

The decision that came at the party’s legislative meeting was a major surprise as many heavyweights including Narendra Singh Tomar, national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya and many more were in the race to replace outgoing CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

Former CM Shivraj also congratulated the newly appointed CM of Madhya Pradesh on his X account.

Former minister Rajendra Shukla and Malhargarh MLA Jagdish Devda have been named deputy chief ministers, while senior BJP leader and former union minister Narendra Singh Tomar has been appointed as the speaker of Madhya Pradesh assembly.

BJP steered towards a victory with fine margins at 163 seats against former CM Kamal Nath-led Congress in the assembly elections held on Nov 17 this year.

The BJP bagged the majority of seats in Gwalior (13), Sagar (21), Rewa (18), Bhopal (22), Indore (23), Ujjain (24), and Jabalpur (22) divisions.

Out of the state’s total 53 districts, the party struck a cleansweep in the seats of 17 of them.

Who is Madhya Pradesh’s new CM?

Mohan Yadav, 58, won the assembly election from Ujjain South constituency. He won the first assembly election in 2013 and won three consecutive elections including 2023.

Yadav won with a staggering 95,699 votes in this year’s election from his constituency, by a margin of 12,941 votes.

In 2020 when the BJP came back to power after toppling the Kamal Nath-led Congress government, Yadav was made higher education minister of Madhya Pradesh.

Yadav started his political career with the ABVP, the student wing of the saffron party in Ujjain University. In 1988, he was made the state president of the ABVP.

He is considered a low-profile BJP leader with high-level contacts. Until a few hours ago, he was not even in the list of probable candidates for the CM’s post.

With this, the tenure of Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who ruled Madhya Pradesh for around two decades and established himself as the strongest leader in MP, came to an end today.

(With inputs from IANS)

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