The year 2025 proved largely positive for Madhya Pradesh, bringing a fair share of development, investment, prosperity, and welfare initiatives under the BJP-led government of Chief Minister Dr Mohan Yadav. However, the year was also marked by some blotches that brought disrepute to the dispensation.
On the very first day of the year, 340 metric tonnes of toxic waste from the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, which had been lying inside the Union Carbide factory in the state capital for the past 40 years, was finally removed on court orders and safely transported to the Pithampur Industrial town near Indore, where it was eventually incinerated.
The next month, investment proposals worth Rs 30.77 lakh crore were received for the state at the two-day ‘Invest Madhya Pradesh – Global Investors Summit – 2025’ (GIS), held in Bhopal on 24-25 February.
Women beneficiaries of the ‘Laadli Behana Yojana’ also started receiving the long-promised Rs 1,500 per month from Diwali this year. Earlier, they were getting Rs 1,250.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Dr Mohan Yadav claimed that MP became totally free of the Naxal menace in 2025, with no hard-core Maoists remaining in the previously affected parts of the state. The CM cited it as one of the biggest achievements of his two-year government, following his oath-taking on 13 December 2023.
The CM also said that the state became the first in the country to formulate an Electric Vehicle (EV) policy.
Madhya Pradesh created history in the renewable energy sector too, with the state’s first ‘Solar-plus-Storage’ project, being developed in Morena, registering the country’s lowest-ever tariff rate of Rs 2.70 per unit.
This is the first project in India where firm and dispatchable renewable energy (FDRE) will be available at a cost of less than Rs 3 per unit.
Moreover, with 95 per cent annual availability of power, the project has set another new benchmark. While previous such projects across the country could ensure only about 50 per cent peak-hour availability and 85 per cent annual availability, the Morena project is changing this trend by ensuring 95 per cent supply during peak hours.
Already crowned India’s cleanest city for eight years in a row, Indore in Madhya Pradesh added another ‘green’ feather to its cap this year, as it became the country’s first city to receive a supply of drinking water from a solar power plant, which has been built mainly through funds generated by the sale of green bonds on the stock exchange.
The solar energy plant has been set up by the Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC). The electricity generated from it is used to operate pumps to supply drinking water from the Narmada River to Indore city.
The state also became the first to have a medical college on the Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) model. Its foundation stone was laid at Dhar by Union Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda.
The country’s first PM MITRA Textile Park was also launched in Dhar this year.
To encourage organ and body donation, the BJP state government launched the practice of offering a guard of honour by police to all deceased who donate their bodies.
The CM informed that Madhya Pradesh became the first and only state in the country to start Air Ambulance and Helicopter Tourism Services as Intra-State Air Services.
In a significant event in India’s ambitious journey of cheetah reintroduction, for the first time, an Indian-born cheetah gave birth to five cubs at the Kuno National Park (KNP) in the Sheopur district of the state.
The female cheetah, Mukhi, became the first Indian-born cheetah to give birth since 1947, when the last cheetah in India was shot dead. The species was subsequently declared extinct in the subcontinent in 1952.
Mukhi is the daughter of Namibian Cheetah Jwala. Mukhi’s becoming a mother has now brought in the third generation of cheetahs in India.
The newborn five cubs are definitely at least half-Indian, as it is not yet certain whether Mukhi’s male partner is also an Indian born cheetah or one from the initial males brought from Namibia and South Africa.
In another important milestone, CM Dr Yadav released three cheetahs from the KNP to the Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary in Ujjain division, making it the second home for cheetahs in MP.
In another major initiative to expand the cheetah habitats in Madhya Pradesh, the BJP state government also accorded an in‑principle approval to develop Virangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve, at Nauradehi in the Sagar district of the state, as the third cheetah habitat in Madhya Pradesh.
On 20 December, the metro rail services were inaugurated in Bhopal. It became the second city in MP, after Indore, to start the metro facility in the same year.
The state had its share of controversies, too, in 2025.
At least three ministers left the BJP government red-faced with their foot-in-the-mouth statements.
Madhya Pradesh Tribal Affairs Minister Vijay Shah made derogatory comments regarding the India-Pakistan conflict following ‘Operation Sindoor’, and dragged the name of PM Narendra Modi, and also hinted at Colonel Sofiya Quereshi without naming her.
At a function in the Manpur area of Mhow near Indore in May, Shah said, “jin katey pitey logon ne….. hamare Hinduon ke kapde utarvaakar maara, …….humne unhi ki bahan ko bhejkar unki aisi taisi karai. Ek baar Modi ji ke liye zordaar taaliyaan bajaiye.”
The minister did not stop here and continued to make other offensive remarks throughout his speech.
“Ab Modi ji kapde to utaar nahi saktey they…..isliye unke samaj ki Bahan ko bheja….ki tumhare samaj ki Bahan aake tumhe nangaa karke choregi,” Shah shouted from the stage with a mike in his hand.
He is currently facing an FIR in the matter.
A few days later, Deputy Chief Minister Jagdish Dewda also made derogatory comments about Indian soldiers.
Dewda made the comments during his speech at an event of the Civil Defence Volunteers at Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh.
“….Hum Modi ji ko dhanyavaad dena chahengey……aur poora desh, desh ki woh Sena, uskey sainik, unkey (Modi’s) charnon mein natmastak hain……ek baar unkey liye zordaar taali bajaayen,” Devda stated.
This was followed by an apparent slip of tongue by BJP Lok Sabha Member from Mandla in MP, Faggan Singh Kulaste, who referred to terrorists as ‘our terrorists’ at a function in Dindori.
Another embarrassment to the BJP came on 17 May, when its first-time MLA from the SC-reserved seat of Mangawan in Rewa district, Narendra Prajapati, said that the ceasefire between India and Pakistan came after the ‘UN’ ordered to do so.
“…….PM Modi would have finished off Pakistan, had we not got orders from the ‘UN’ to stop,” Prajapati said, and that too during the BJP’s victory-signalling ‘Tiranga Yatra’ at Rewa.
In another controversial issue, bowing down to the intense and relentless opposition and protests by farmers and villagers of Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Dr Mohan Yadav had to order the scrapping of the Madhya Pradesh BJP government’s contentious ‘Land Pooling Scheme’, which aimed at permanently taking the lands of farmers and villagers to construct a concrete ‘Kumbh City’ for the 2028 Simhastha religious congregation in Ujjain, the CM’s hometown.
Nearly 2,380 hectares of land were being acquired for the Simhastha Kumbh Mela to be held in Ujjain in 2028.
A major blot on the state government came when at least 26 children in the age group of 8-14 died over a couple of months due to kidney failure and other complications after consuming a toxic cough syrup ‘Coldrif’.
Initially, the BJP government tried to downplay the tragedy, but following widespread national and international criticism, it banned the syrup, arrested the factory owner from Tamil Nadu, and also suspended and transferred some officials.
In April, a man, accused of posing as an eminent cardiologist of the United Kingdom, allegedly performed 15 heart procedures at a Missionary-run Hospital in the Damoh district, following which seven of the patients died.
An FIR was registered at the Damoh Kotwali against the accused, whose real name is said to be Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav. Still, he posed as a famous British interventional cardiologist, Dr N John Camm.
In a major alleged ‘Love Jihad’ scandal that surfaced in Bhopal in April, the police arrested six Muslim youths based on FIRs filed by at least seven Hindu girls, invoking provisions of the Freedom of Religion Act, the POCSO Act, rape, blackmail, threatening, and other relevant sections.
The National Commission for Women (NCW) and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) also sent their teams to Bhopal to probe the matter.
A major crime that grabbed national and international headlines was the murder case of Indore businessman Raja Raghuvanshi (29), a transport dealer.
Raja got married to Sonam Raghuvanshi (25), also from Indore, on 11 May. They reached Shillong in Meghalaya on 20 May for their honeymoon.
However, both went missing there on 23 May. Raja’s body was found in a deep gorge near a waterfall in the Sohra (Cherrapunji) area on 2 June.
The Meghalaya police registered a case of murder and launched investigations.
Sonam remained missing for the next seven days, despite extensive search operations.
In the early hours of 9 June, Sonam was located at a dhaba in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh. She was initially detained and subsequently arrested on suspicion of being the mastermind behind her husband’s murder.
Following that, four more accused were arrested, including three suspected hired killers from Indore and Bina in Madhya Pradesh, and another suspect from Uttar Pradesh.
Finally, the police arrested seven people in connection with the case.