Best chief minister: Top draws

In an unusual move, West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee has decided to campaign for the Samajwadi Party (SP) in the run-up to the Uttar Pradesh assembly election scheduled in February and March. To have the chief minister of one state campaigning in another is not unusual except for the fact that Mamata’s TMC and Akhilesh Yadav’s SP are not part of any formal alliance. Moreover, the TMC has no electoral stake in UP. Yet the SP reached out to Mamata, who had trounced the BJP in West Bengal last year, because it is up against one of the tallest leaders in the saffron stable—Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath.

Graphics by Tanmoy Chakraborty

For the fourth consecutive time in the india today MOTN poll, the monk-turned-politician has been rated as the most popular chief minister—27.1 per cent of the 60,141 respondents across the country think he has been the best performing chief minister in India. For Yogi Adityanath, it’s a jump of eight percentile points since the last MOTN poll in August 2021. However, it has not been a smooth or unmitigated ascent. His acceptance soars in certain geography and caste groups—he ranks top among 45 per cent respondents from north India and 41 per cent respondents from upper-caste Hindus. At the same time, only 10 per cent respondents from south India and 5 per cent Muslim respondents back him as the No.1 CM. Despite his soaring popularity, the Hindutva icon remains a polarising figure in national politics.

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Graphics by Tanmoy Chakraborty

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is the only other chief minister whose national ratings have gone up since the last MOTN in August—from 14 per cent to 20 per cent. The most significant aspect of his popularity is that he gets maximum support—35 per cent—from Sikhs, a community that dominates the politics of Punjab, where his party, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), is a key player in the forthcoming assembly election. Among all chief ministers, he also has the highest support from scheduled tribes, with 33 per cent favouring him. He is also the second most popular chief minister among Muslims with 25 per cent respondents giving him top rating while 26 per cent chose Mamata Banerjee as the best performing head of a state.

When it comes to the chief ministers’ performance within their own states, Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik is No.1, with 71 per cent respondents expressing their satisfaction with his governance. He is closely followed by Mamata Banerjee who has been able to make 70 per cent respondents in her state happy. There are only nine chief ministers who have a higher share of satisfied respondents in their own states than the average of 43 per cent.

What’s also interesting is that this list is dominated by regional stalwarts who occupy the top six positions. Among the national parties, the Congress does well with two of its three chief ministers—Chhattisgarh’s Bhupesh Baghel and Rajasthan’s Ashok Gehlot—among the top nine. While the BJP has 13 chief ministers, only one of them—newly-installed Himanta Biswa Sarma from Assam—found place among the top nine, with 57 per cent respondents from the state expressing satisfaction at his performance. The BJP’s most celebrated chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, is also missing from that list.

Another debutant chief minister—Tamil Nadu’s M.K. Stalin—has earned the satisfaction of 68 per cent of the respondents from his state, propelling him to No.3 position. In fact, satraps like Stalin have been rated high not only within the state, but have also shown increasing popularity across the country. TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, DMK president Stalin and Maharashtra chief minister and Shiv Sena supremo Uddhav Thackeray are the three chief ministers who are among the top five in both lists—the one based on the ratings by respondents across all states and the other based on the ratings given by respondents from the home state of the chief minister. That’s a lesson the national parties may want to learn from these veterans.