Listen to this article:

New Delhi: Contaminated drinking water leading to deaths in Indore, rising air pollution in the national capital Delhi, widespread protests over the murder of Ankita Bhandari in Uttarakhand, illegal mining in the Aravallis in Rajasthan – the new year has brought focus on a spate of governance failures.

At the centre of these crises in Madhya Pradesh, New Delhi, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan, lie Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief ministers, Mohan Yadav, Rekha Gupta and Pushkar Singh Dhami, respectively. In another BJP-ruled state, Odisha, chief minister Mohan Majhi is also facing criticism over increasing instances of violence against minorities, particularly after a Christian pastor was allegedly assaulted by a Hindutva mob.

As in the case of its new party president, Nitin Nabin, the party under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah, has picked up almost the least known of workers and pushed them to occupy high office. A string of BJP chief ministers, many of whom have been appointed in the last three years, are the latest examples of such ‘unknowns’ entrusted with enormous power, state machinery and responsibility. In the case of five states, recently, it is infamy over some damning incidents that has pushed their lack of administrative and political acumen onto centre stage.

According to political observers, the move to appoint political lightweights follows a “deliberate centralising strategy”, and despite governance failures the party’s brand equity lies not in governance but in Hindu nationalism, strongman leadership and identity politics.

“The BJP’s recurring decision to appoint relatively unknown or politically lightweight figures as chief ministers, and now even as party president, reflects a deliberate centralising strategy,” said Zoya Hasan, Professor Emerita, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. 

“Their political insignificance ensures that real authority remains firmly concentrated in the hands of the Prime Minister’s Office and the party high command. ‘Nobodies’ are far easier to manage and control. The consequences are visible in governance failures as in Indore, for example, or in repeated infrastructure collapses. Inexperienced leaders lack both the confidence and the political capital to take decisive action, manage crises, or push back against bureaucratic inertia.”

The Wire takes a look at these chief ministers, who they are, and why they are facing questions of governance failures.

In Delhi, where the BJP won assembly elections in February 2025, forming government in the national capital for the first time in over a decade, the party followed the now conventional template under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah of elevating lesser known leaders. Rekha Gupta belongs to the Bania community, considered among the core BJP support base and is the only woman out of the BJP’s 14 chief ministers across India. She was a shock pick, who rose, bypassing her more well known colleagues in the Delhi unit including Parvesh Verma, Ashish Sood, Virendra Sachdeva, Vijender Gupta and Satish Upadhyay.

While Gupta was said to be close to the RSS due to her long association with the organisation since the beginning of her political career, her electoral trajectory has seen more losses than wins. Gupta had........

© The Wire