Man behind party8217;s efforts at turnaround

Earlier this month,Chhattisgarh Congress president Nand Kumar Patel skipped the engagement of his younger son,Umesh,who went on to get married last Sunday.

Earlier this month,Chhattisgarh Congress president Nand Kumar Patel skipped the engagement of his younger son,Umesh,who went on to get married last Sunday. During the engagement,Patel was too busy with the Parivartan Yatra,targeted at the BJP government.

In a state where the BJP has been dominating the political scene,Patel had striven to give the Congress an identity of its own. Soon after becoming the partys Chhattisgarh chief in April 2011,Patel made a public statement that stunned the states politicians: Its not proper that Congressmen meet Raman Singh in the dark of night. This practice must stop now.

Many in the party,including top leaders,were said to be managed by Raman Singh,and the Congress itself was being termed the B team of the BJP. Patel was the first senior Congress leader to spell it out.

In his efforts to take the Congress to a position from where it could challenge the BJP in the polls later this year,Patel reorganised the defunct state committee and brought in new faces. This left several sulking when he began but the party gradually accepted his leadership. Congress leaders,who so far had refrained from attacking Raman Singh,started to become vocal against the chief minister. They began to hold dharnas against Singh,including some outside his house,even asking for his resignation on some issues.

Essentially a rural leader with a farmers background,Patel was not comfortable with English and depended on his son Dinesh to explain things to him. Dinesh,who died with him,was an MBA. An unassuming leader,he worked largely under his fathers shadow but managed his last two election campaigns from behind the scenes.

Patel belonged to Kharasiya,Raigarh district,won six terms as MLA from there,and was a minister in Digvijay Singh government of undivided MP,besides being the first home minister of Chhattisgarh. He was a staunch opponent of the BJP governments policy of selling out the states minerals resources. Ironically,on this count he stood at the same platform with Maoists.

Months after becoming the PCC chief,he had been targeted by Maoists,who attacked his convoy in Devbog.

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Unlike government leaders who often blame Maoists for not been able to take basic services and governance to interior areas,he stressed that the fault lay with the administration and politics. It was he who drafted and launched a massive outreach programme earlier this year Ghar ghar Congress,har ghar Congress. He died before its results,if any,could be visible.

Whenever this reporter met him,he would invariably ask one question: Ab to hum thik kar rahe hain na? We are doing all right now,arent we? Implicit in that question was whether there was a change in the reputation that many Congressmen had for being close to the BJP.