Journalism of Courage
The BJP has yet to find its feet in Chhattisgarh since it was trounced five years ago by the Bhupesh Baghel-led Congress. Now, with another Assembly election approaching, the party is looking at a new face it can project as a chief ministerial candidate instead of going back to three-time CM Raman Singh if it returns to power.
BJP insiders, however, emphasise that the only leader who will be projected in the run-up to the elections is Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the party will have ample support on the ground from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to add heft to its efforts to regain control of the state.
If the party manages to overcome its internal differences and defeat the Congress, Singh is unlikely to be the first choice for the CM’s post. Sources in the BJP refused to say if the three-time CM, who is now one of the party’s 12 national vice presidents, would be in the running once again to take charge of the state but added that an organisational reshuffle, like in Gujarat, could happen and many first-timers might get poll tickets. If the BJP returns to power, there is a strong possibility of the leadership choosing someone from an Other Backward Class (OBC) community or a Scheduled Tribe (ST) group with strong Hindutva credentials, according to party insiders.
Among the leaders whose names fit the profile, according to these sources, is former tribal welfare minister Kedar Kashyap, who is a former MLA from Narayanpur that was rocked by a series of attacks on Christians last month. According to others in the party, someone like former minister and current Raipur South MLA Brijmohan Agrawal can also find themselves in the running even though he does not fit the caste calculation. Responding to the Congress’s OBC politics — Baghel belongs to an OBC community — the BJP last August appointed Janjgir MLA (Champa district) Narayan Chandel the Leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly and placed Bilaspur MP Arun Sao in charge of the state unit. Both leaders are OBCs, with Chandel belonging to the Kurmi community and Sao hailing from the Sahu community.
BJP insiders added RSS would spearhead the ground campaign, starting with meetings in cities across the state on the issue of religious conversions. Such a meeting is scheduled to be held in Raipur on January 22, with the party expecting more than 20,000 people to be in attendance.
The Raman Singh era
As of now, Raman Singh is seemingly not in the running for a fourth term as CM even if his party manages to win. A Union minister in the Atal Behari Vajpayee government, the 70-year-old was at the helm of the state BJP when the party came to power for the first time by winning 50 of the 90 Assembly seats. His main rival for the CM’s chair at the time was Dilip Singh Judeo. But, with Judeo involved in a controversy, Singh was placed at the helm of the state.
This was the beginning of a 15-year run in power because of which Singh is still Chhattisgarh’s longest-serving CM. He won a second term in power after the party repeated its performance and again won 50 constituencies. BJP leaders said the promise to provide rice for Re 1 per kg to families below the poverty line was a decisive factor in the party’s victory. Singh kept the promise by implementing the Antyodaya scheme.
In 2013, the BJP won 49 Assembly seats but the Congress had by then closed the gap. The Opposition party won 39 constituencies with a 40.43 per cent vote share while the BJP was marginally ahead at 41.18 per cent.
The following year, Singh faced criticism from within the party for getting his son Abhishek the Lok Sabha ticket from Rajnandgaon and denying Madhusudhan Yadav, the incumbent MP at the time who had wrested control of the constituency from the Congress in 2009 with a victory margin over 1 lakh votes. This came months after Narendra Modi, at the time the PM candidate, targeted the Congress over dynasty politics while campaigning for the Assembly elections in Chhattisgarh. But Abhishek failed to retain the constituency for the party.
The anti-incumbency factor caught up with Singh and the BJP five years later, with discontentment in the ruling party also contributing to the election debacle. Singh is said to have not paid much heed to other party legislators, which led some of them to complain to the central leadership. The then CM was accused of ignoring BJP MLAs and attaching too much importance to two to three senior bureaucrats close to him.
In the parliamentary elections the following year, the party fielded new faces and won nine of the 11 Lok Sabha seats. This marked a remarkable turnaround months after the Assembly election defeat, speeding up the party’s move away from the Raman Singh era.
Rise of Bhupesh Baghel
The decline of Raman Singh and the BJP’s struggle to find an alternative to fill Singh’s shoe was in contrast to the Congress that saw Bhupesh Baghel grow in stature.
During the Baghel government’s tenure, the party has won all five bypolls for Assembly and local body elections. In the last five years, the party also won all the Zilla Parishad, Nagar Nigam, Nagar Palika, and Nagar Panchayats elections. Baghel’s stature as a national leader of the Congress has also grown and in recent years he has campaigned for the party during elections in Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra. “The Gandhi family sees him as a loyalist. As far as a mass leader is concerned, he is among the top five leaders of Congress in India apart from the Gandhis,” said a state Congress leader.
To counter the BJP, over the past year or so, the CM has resorted to playing up regional Chhattisgarhi pride to counter the BJP’s Hindutva politics. To this end, he has taken measures such as putting up statues of Chhattisgarh Mahatari, an icon of Chhattisgarhi pride, in all districts and implemented the decision to have her portraits in all government offices. Mahatari means mother in the Chhattisgarhi dialect. He has also deftly tried to take the wind out of the BJP’s sails by revamping the Shivarinarayan temple complex as part of the government’s ambitious Ram Van Gaman Paryatan Paripath, a tourism circuit envisaged to map the route in present-day Chhattisgarh that devotees believe was traversed by Hindu deity Ram during his 14-year exile from Ayodhya.
