The Hindu : The first battle

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Sunday, Nov 16, 2003

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The first battle

The only tactic of the BJP, a house divided, is to gun for Ajit Jogi who has his own problems. AARTI DHAR on the first Assembly election in Chhattisgarh.

AS A State going to the polls for the first time after its formation three years ago, Chhattisgarh has been attracting a lot of attention. Nothing, perhaps, could be worse than the Election Commission's admonition to the State Government not to work with a `partisan' attitude and not to violate the model code of conduct. Coming at a time when the popularity of the Chief Minister, Ajit Jogi, is showing a downward trend, the reprimand has pushed the graph lower for the Congress in Chhattisgarh.

The Congress' image took a beating when Mr. Jogi got mired in a controversy over his tribal antecedents. It nosedived further when he was charge-sheeted in the Intelligence Bureau fraud case. Then came the distribution of school bags with his pictures embossed on them and now it is the Chief Election Commissioner's strictures.

What looked like a cakewalk for the Congress until six months ago now appears to be a competition of sorts. The Congress with 63 seats in the 90-member Assembly had hoped to win more than 80 seats earlier but now expects to win between 50 and 55 — comfortable enough to form a Government.

A badly fragmented Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — the main Opposition party — has not been able to raise issues that concern ordinary citizens such as the lack of infrastructure, poor standard of education, alleged misappropriation in paddy procurement and rampant corruption. It has done nothing except launch scathing personal attacks on Mr. Jogi during his three years of governance. And, as things are going now, the BJP will continue to target Mr. Jogi during the election campaign.

The BJP's undoing has been the infighting, right from the time its MLA, Ram Dayal Uikey, vacated his Marwahi seat for Mr. Jogi. A year later, about a dozen legislators defected to the Congress and the final blow came with the BJP Lok Sabha MP from Sarangarh, P.R. Khunte, joining the Jogi camp earlier this week. Simmering resentment in the party over ticket distribution is also apparent now.

The BJP is looking to the 34 seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes since it will be difficult to make inroads into the 10 Assembly segments reserved for the Scheduled Castes where voters have traditionally supported the Congress. Exuding confidence, the Congress claims that the Scheduled Caste and the Other Backward Caste voters are its strength with the two comprising more than 50 per cent of the total 1.35 crore voters. And the party has been able to consolidate the chunk of OBC voters to a great extent. Again, the bulk of ST votes for the Congress are likely to come from the naxalite-affected Bastar, Dantewada, Jashpur, and Surguja districts. Much would depend on the stand the naxalites would take. If they boycott the elections, unlikely to happen, the loss would be that of the Congress. In the northern tribal belt of Jashpur, if `re-conversion' has had any impact it will benefit the BJP.

The BJP can, at best, only make the coming polls "Jogi-centric." Internal bickerings in the party have prevented it from officially announcing the chief ministerial candidate. The Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests, Dilip Singh Judev, is an aspirant but his being a non-tribal is a drawback. However, MPs from Chhattisgarh are not contesting as a policy decision. By pitting Mr. Sai against Mr. Jogi from the reserved (ST) Marwahi Assembly, the BJP has made it more than clear that it has no other tribal candidate who can take on Mr. Jogi.

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), led by the old warhorse, V.C. Shukla, that has emerged as the third contender can cut into the Congress and the BJP votes. Even if it manages to secure some percentage of votes, these may not necessarily convert into seats. The NCP's possible seat arrangement with the BJP is an attempt to prevent division of the Brahmin votes. The percentage of tribal voters in Chhattisgarh is 37; the Scheduled Castes comprise 22 per cent and the OBCs about 14 per cent.

As far as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is concerned, its seat arrangement with the Congress has made it more than clear that it does not intend to cut into the ruling party's votes. The party only hopes to increase the number of its MLAs from the present one but without damaging the Congress prospects — pursuing its line of keeping the BJP out of power at any cost. The Gondwana Gantantra Party has just a presence in the State and there are two independent MLAs, one of whom supports the Congress. The Left Parties have never made much of an impact in the State's political arena.

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