In Madhya Pradesh, too many cooks seem to be stirring the BJP's broth

Regional leaders jostling for tickets for their adherents made candidate selection a lengthy and arduous operation for the party in MP

The posters lining the streets of the business capital of Madhya Pradesh foreground PM Narendra Modi and the CM Shivraj Chouhan and hold out the promise of transforming Madhya Pradesh from a “developed” to a “prosperous” state. But scratch the dominating visuals and there’s little doubt that unlike Modi, who held unchallenged sway over Gujarat for the 12 years that he helmed it, Chouhan, the avuncular “Mammaji”, is not quite the overlord he is perceived to be. In the prelude to the assembly elections, he has had to regroup his support within the MP unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party