Shivraj Singh Chouhan to hold marathon meet of ministers amid buzz of a big decision

Bhopal : Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan will hold a special meeting with his cabinet ministers on Sunday. While no official programmes regarding the same have been released, calling the cabinet meeting on Sunday has given room for speculation in the political gallery.

It is more because the meeting was called after Chouhan’s meeting with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat in Nagpur on February 15, and all the ministers have been asked to be in Bhopal for the meeting.

Notably, the ministers along with MLAs and the entire Madhya Pradesh BJP unit have been busy in ‘Vikas Yatra’ across the state. During the ongoing yatra, which started on February 5, the ministers and MLAs have been visiting in their respective constituencies, meeting with people and laying foundation stones of projects.

But, calling for a meeting without releasing any official programme and instructing the ministers for mandatory presence has made them apprehensive. Sources said that it would be a close-door marathon meeting, and CM Chouhan is also supposed to hold a one-to-one meeting with some of his cabinet ministers.

Apart from a major programme related to completion of two years of tree-plantation drive by Chouhan, a meeting of the BJP executive is also scheduled for the day. There are indications that the cabinet meeting is likely in the second half of the day.

There are conjectures that Chouhan might finally go for a long-awaited final cabinet reshuffle before the Assembly polls scheduled for November 2023 and that many of the current ministers might be shown the door, however, the leaders claimed it a routine meeting.

Sources said thag at least half a dozen ministers are said to have met senior functionaries of the RSS in Bhopal during the past two days, further igniting the speculations.

On February 15, CM Chouhan had visited RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat in Nagpur and then had flown to Rewa to lay down the foundation for the airport. Sources claimed the message for the cabinet meeting was given from Rewa.

A buzz about possible cabinet reshuffle has also begun with calls for a meeting on Sunday. Notably, the reshuffle of Chouhan’s cabinet, not undertaken since he expanded it in July 2020 after taking over as the CM in March that year, is indeed on the cards.

Sources have maintained that it should come before February ends and probably after the state government’s ‘Vikas Yatra’ concludes on February 25.