Rewa: Months ahead of the crucial assembly elections, where the BJP is leaving no stone unturned to win another straight term, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Saturday announced making Mauganj, a tehsil in Rewa, the state’s 53rd district. , Political observers said the move is aimed at weeding out discontent against the government over the “lack of adequate representation” for the politically important Vindhya region in the state cabinet.
The long-standing demand for creation of Mauganj district has gained momentum recently.
Chouhan said at a function, “On August 15, the national flag will be hoisted in the new Mauganj district (headquarters).
Besides this, the Chief Minister laid the foundation stone for projects worth over Rs 738 crore, many of which are in Mauganj. Official sources said that in the new projects, 10 works worth Rs 73.56 crore would be taken up in the new district.
Enumerating the merits of Sambal Yojana, which mainly caters to the needs of unorganized labourers, Chouhan said that this scheme provides assistance from birth to death. Hitting out at his predecessor Kamal Nath of the Congress, Chouhan said Nath had abandoned the scheme during his 15-month tenure as chief minister from December 2018 to March 2020.
Sources said the new Mauganj district, bordering Uttar Pradesh, will have four tehsils – Mauganj, Hanumana, Naigarhi and Devtalab, with a population of over six lakh.
With the creation of the new district, two assembly constituencies of the currently ruling Bharatiya Janata Party were moved to Mauganj. Now six assembly seats are left in Rewa district.
Rewa division will now have five districts namely Rewa, Mauganj, Satna, Sidhi and Singrauli, while the number of districts in Vindhya region will be eight.
Though the Vindhya region is a stronghold of the BJP, it has got only one ministerial berth in the Chouhan cabinet.
In the 2018 MP Assembly elections, the BJP won 24 of the 30 seats in the Vindhya region, while the Congress could not open its account in four districts of the region.
Recently, Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) made inroads in some areas of the region, which has become a matter of concern for the BJP.
Last year, AAP had won the mayor’s election in Singrauli city of Vindhya region.
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“People have been demanding for a long time that Mauganj be made a district. Now people will demand that Maihar be made a new district in Satna. Several protests have been held in Maihar under the leadership of local BJP MLA Narayan Tripathi regarding this demand.” senior journalist Rajesh Dwivedi told PTI.
He said that the creation of Mauganj district before the elections did not yield much political mileage to the BJP as the people of the area felt neglected when only one ministerial post was allotted to them.
Dwivedi said, “Only Ramkhelavan Patel was representing the region. But after the demand for a separate Vindhya Pradesh gained momentum, Girish Gautam was made the Speaker of the MP Assembly.”
After 15 years of BJP rule, the 2018 elections in Madhya Pradesh resulted in a hung assembly, with the Congress emerging as the single largest party with 114 seats in the 230-member house, but failing to secure a majority.
BJP had won 109 seats. The Congress later formed a coalition government under the leadership of Kamal Nath. However, in March 2020, several Congress MLAs defected to the BJP, paving the way for the saffron party’s return to power under the leadership of Shivraj Singh Chouhan.