MP governor ‘shoots’ off his mouth

Balram Jakhar threatened to ‘shoot’ Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan if he didn’t finish his tasks on time—then backtracked and said that he had only said that he would ‘sack’ him. That created the expected storm, but Jakhar has a long history of verbal excess.

By N D Sharma

For a change, Governor Balram Jakhar is making more spicy news in Madhya Pradesh. Recently, he announced at a public function that he would like Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan to chalk out timebound programmes. If the chief minister said he wanted 10 days to complete a task, he (Jakhar) was prepared to give him 15—but after that, he would “shoot” the chief minister. Then, he added hurriedly, all that he meant was that he would “sack” him, not ventilate him.

The headlines the following day obviously went to town. Jakhar observed that he might be a “rustic” but hardly a “dolt” who would declare that he would “shoot” the chief minister. He blamed the media for misrepresenting his views, and stated that he had only said that Chauhan should give his officers 15 days if they demanded 10 days to complete a certain task—but that after that the chief minister should “shoot” them—that is, “sack” them.

Was it no more than a play of words? Your guess. The governor’s public declaration to “shoot” Chauhan inspired Minister of the Public Works Department (PWD) and Energy Kailash Vijayvargiya to give vent to his pent-up feelings against the good governor. Vijayvargiya promptly advised Jakhar not to transgress the decorum expected of a Constitutional authority. He also said that there would be a political storm if he disclosed the nature of works the governor had been recommending to him, which provoked Congress leaders to accuse Vijayvargiya of trying to blackmail the governor.

Vijayvargiya is nursing his own grievance against the governor. He is allegedly embroiled in a multi-crore-rupee scam involving the distribution of social security pensions to ineligible and nonexistent persons through unauthorised channels. The matter is pending before an Indore court. The complainant, a Congress leader, had sought the governor’s sanction to prosecute Vijayvargiya. Jakhar had referred the matter to the government, which had, in its turn, told him that the sanction could not be granted as the Social Justice Department, which ran the pension scheme, did not find enough evidence for a prosecution.

The governor wrote to the chief minister on December 1, asking him to place the pension scam-related papers before the cabinet. While a chagrined Vijayvargiya could not find fault with the governor’s Constitutional right to write to the chief minister on what he considers an issue of public importance, he accused the governor of playing Congress politics, arguing that the governor had raked up the pension scam issue barely three days before the polling for the Pandhana by-election. Vijayvargiya was in charge of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) campaign there.

During his first year in the Bhopal Raj Bhavan, Jakhar had been a constant source of vexation to state Congress leaders because he made no secret of his excellent rapport with then chief minister Babulal Gaur and missed no opportunity to praise the work of his government. He was also said to have treated cavalierly the Congress delegations that went to him with complaints against ministers or other government functionaries.

The things changed with the change of guard at Vallabh Bhavan (Bhopal Mantralaya). Jakhar had been displaying a love-hate relationship with Shivraj Singh Chauhan. He would embarrass Chauhan by unrestrained speeches at public functions and then, a few days later, he would ask Chauhan’s wife, Sadhna Singh, to invite him for lunch and prepare him kheer. Chauhan was on a foreign jaunt when Vijayvargiya and Narendra Singh Tomar (a close confidant of Chauhan’s and now state BJP president) were flaying Jakhar for his ballistics statement. When Chauhan returned, he was asked by reporters about the governor’s “threat”. He calmly replied that the governor had called him up and told him that he had no such intention, and that Chauhan shouldn’t believe media reports.

Jakhar is a bit of a verbal loose cannon. He sees corruption all over, but his prognosis is inventive: the corrupt will rot and have sores all over their body where pests and worms will breed. He declaims that politicians will have to be set right but doesn’t spell out how. He says he is unhappy with the Centre’s agricultural policy and has conveyed as much to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He is not happy with M S Swaminathan, who headed the National Commission on Farmers, either—forgetting that it was he who had introduced Swaminathan to ex-prime minister Indira Gandhi.

He is distressed, he says, that all sorts of “jamoore” (buffoons) approach him for appointments as vice-chancellors of universities and that he is being pressured. The fact remains that the first man Jakhar appointed as vice-chancellor of a Madhya Pradesh university has a proven murky past of corruption and fraud.