The May 25 Maoist attack in Chhattisgarhs Darbha valley was unprecedented in magnitude and unexpected in its fallout. The Congress lost four top leaders,but was still accused of conspiracy. The sympathy wave that was widely expected to sweep the party to power was broken by a sustained campaign of propaganda by the BJP,made credible by the vicious infighting within the Congress. In Raipur,Ashutosh Bhardwaj tells the story of an opportunity born in blood and lost in rumour Late in the evening of May 25,the long,dark shadows over Raipurs Congress Bhavan were those of despair and hopelessness. For a long time,workers and common people who poured in had no official confirmation,but knew the terrible truth anyway. The shock and grief of losing four top state party leaders in that mornings Maoist ambush in Bastar was overwhelming. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi arrived from Delhi after midnight. The conspiracy theorists had by then constructed a formidable narrative. And the incorrigible opportunists had begun to already see in the catastrophe the promise of a poll-time dividend. Outside the Congress office,taxi driver Mohammad Javed,who works for Navaj Travels in Tikrapara,finished the investigation in his head and delivered the verdict: It was Jogi. Even in the blinding gloom of that moment,even to those who might have found it odd that Ajit Jogi had chosen to fly back,leaving the rest of his partymen to come by road,that deduction suggesting that the former chief minister had conspired with Maoists to blow up his colleagues would have appeared both far-fetched and unfair. Over the following week,however,precisely this was to develop into the dominant conspiracy theory in the state. It was to be hijacked by the BJP to neutralise the effect of an emergent sympathy wave in favour of the Congress,and it was to only deepen the faultlines within the Congress. Initially,grief and anger did translate into sympathy,especially as it was established that a security lapse caused by the deployment of forces for Chief Minister Raman Singhs Vikas Yatra had left the Congress convoy vulnerable. Buoyed by public sentiment,and realising the electoral potential of the tragedy,the Congress planned a statewide Kalash Yatra,carrying the ashes of martyrs Nand Kumar Patel,Mahendra Karma,V C Shukla and Uday Mudaliyar. And then the BJP decided to strike back. In simultaneous press conferences in Raipur,Ambikapur and Jagdalpur covering all of Chhattisgarh BJP spokespersons named Jogi as the key conspirator. BJP workers dropped the Jogi bomb in every town and every mohalla. State Home Minister Nanki Ram Kanwar compared Congressmen with murderous medieval empires in which claimants for power thought nothing of annihilating their own. We knew our targets. Naming Jogi would have two effects. It would kill the wave and divide the Congress. And the Congress party just walked into our trap, a BJP leader would later boast privately. The party demanded a narco test on MLA Kawasi Lakhma,the only leader who survived the attack. Lakhma,a close aide of Jogis,was with Patel and his son Dinesh. The Maoists killed them,but let Lakhma go. Media reports fuelled the rumours. It was reported that when Lakhma visited the injured V C Shukla in a Gurgaon hospital,a group of angry Congressmen waylaid him and beat him severely. Lakhma,in fact,had never stepped out of Chhattisgarh. A picture of Chhattisgarh Congress chief Charan Das Mahant visiting Lakhma in hospital appeared to show the former with a raised hand,and the caption said he had slapped Lakhma for his role in the Darbha attack. Both Mahant and Lakhma clarified repeatedly that the PCC chief was in fact patting Lakhma on the back,but the damage had been done. Several newspapers reported that an inquiry by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had named Jogi and Lakhma,and that Jogis loyalists were being hunted down and beaten by Congress workers. The NIA issued a strong denial,and AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh called the reports absolutely inane. Jogi,however,took this to be an attempt by his rivals in Delhi to use the NIA to settle scores with him. As the already deep divisions in the Congress grew deeper,Jogi explored options outside the Congress,and his rivals took their complaints to 10 Janpath. As the noise increased,the memories of Darbha receded,and Chief Minister Raman Singh resumed his Vikas Yatra. Can a party that does not respect even its deceased be trusted to rule the state? the BJP asked. Congressi kha gaye bechare Patel ko. The Congress has since brought a degree of stability in its house,but speaking with less than a month to go for the first phase of polling in Chhattisgarh,Jogi admitted that the partys prospects had been severely damaged. The fact that these rumours were supported by some of my detractors in the party ensured that the sympathy wave was totally not partially diluted. This wave was so strong that we could have won on its strength alone. But the entire advantage has been lost now. Even the Kalash Yatras could not evoke a response, Jogi told The Indian Express. The BJP launched a vicious campaign of slander against me. It was only when I filed a criminal defamation case against their top four men,including (state BJP president Narendra Singh) Tomar and (BJP general secretary J P) Nadda,that they stopped this, Jogi added. Jogi also filed a defamation case against a TV channel. Chhattisgarhs Naxal heartland,including Darbha,votes on November 11. But as Jogi says,the attack no longer figures on the Congresss election agenda. In a remarkable political wipeout,both the memory and the message no longer matter there.
