4th time lucky, Shivraj Singh Chouhan takes oath as Madhya Pradesh CM

New Delhi, Mar 23: BJP leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan took oath as Madhya Pradesh's chief minister Monday, 23 March, at Raj Bhavan in Bhopal. He was elected state BJP Legislature Party leader in the evening. The legislature party members - wearing masks due to coronavirus threat and sitting two chairs away from each other - unanimously elected Chouhan as their leader.

The BJP's central observers Arun Singh and Vinay Sahasrabuddhe joined the meeting via video conferencing from Delhi. Senior BJP MLA and ex-leader of opposition Gopal Bhargava proposed the name of Chouhan as legislature party leader, which was endorsed by Vijay Shah, Meena Singh, Paras Jain and other MLAs.

After this process, Arun Singh announced Chouhan's name as leader of BJP legislature party. Chouhan, who thanked the MLAs, accused the outgoing Congress dispensation of "ruining" the state, and said he would change the way of running the government from now.

Calling fighting the coronavirus as his top priority, Chouhan said, "We will defeat this disease." "We will improve our governance....the shortcomings so far will be removed," he said. He said he will go to Mantralaya (state secretariat) after taking oath and sit till late night to review measures taken to deal with the novel coronavirus outbreak.

This comes days after the Congress government in the state fell, with the resignation of Kamal Nath as the CM. The crisis in the state was precipitated by Jyotiraditya Scindia's shift to the BJP, and the resignation of 22 Congress MLAs.