The Hindu : Cong. faces sullen voters in Malwa

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 27, 2003

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National

Cong. faces sullen voters in Malwa

By K.V. Prasad

DEWAS (M.P.) NOV. 26. The confidence of the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, about retaining power notwithstanding, the Congress is up against sullen voters in these parts of Malwa region. Lack of electricity is a common grouse and adding to it are the local factors.

The Congress posters and banners proclaim its pioneering role in ushering in "Panchayati Raj". The delegation of authority is conceded as a favourable point but in many rural pockets it has also resulted in creating alternative structures of power, rivalry among some party leaders and also allegations of corruption.

While the opposition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party has been highlighting the poor state of roads and power crisis as indicators of the lack of development in the last decade of the Congress rule, the ruling party has been citing the rise in human development indices. The focus of the campaign being on development or the lack of it, local factors seem to play a role. For instance, in Dewas the battle is essentially between the sitting BJP MLA, Tukojiram Pawar, who belongs to an erstwhile royal family. He is being challenged by Kanwar Jaisingh, a Mayor who is said to have a considerable following among the lower strata of society.

In neighbouring Sonkatch constituency, the contest between Sajjan Singh Verma, a Minister in the Digvijay Singh Government and BJP's Pannalal, a former IPS officer has taken a sharp turn. The fortunes appear to be swinging either way.

Mr. Pawar's supporters claim their leader, at present admitted in a Delhi hospital with a cardiac problem, would sail through because of his work. The MLA has circulated a pamphlet with photographs of him taking treatment, a move which he hopes would strike the right emotional chord among the voters.

Another interesting battle is further down in Bagli, where the BJP has fielded Deepak Joshi, son of its State party chief and eight-time MLA, Kailash Joshi. The younger Joshi faces "in-house" opposition from those resisting nepotism and influential Congress MLA, Shyam Holani who stopped the senior Joshi in the 1998 Assembly polls. In addition, the tribal population which has a sizeable presence has decided to field one of their own, a policeman who dumped the uniform and entered the fray. While the contest is essentially direct, the presence of others in the form of Bahujan Samaj Party and independents is bound to upset the calculations.

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