Two faces of Salwa Judum in Bastar battle

Deepak Karma and Soni Sori, candidates respectively of the Congress and the AAP, are contesting from Bastar.

In one of the most intriguing battles this election, the son of Salwa Judum architect Mahendra Karma, since killed by Maoists, faces a woman who opposed the vigilante force, had Maoist cases slapped against her and became the symbol of police atrocities against tribals.

Deepak Karma and Soni Sori, candidates respectively of the Congress and the AAP, are contesting from Bastar. Both are first-timers and in their mid-30s, both hail from Dantewada, and both are vocal activists for Gond tribals though they represent two opposite strands of the Dandakaranya concept.

Deepak lost several of his relatives to Maoist attacks, while Sori saw her relatives jailed for years on Maoist-related charges that many find frivolous. Her husband died days after his acquittal, allegedly of injuries he sustained in jail. She favours a dialogue with Maoists; Deepak doesn’t believe it will work.

Story continues below this ad

“The tribal is the killer, and he gets killed too. We need to rehabilitate all displaced persons to their villages,” Deepak says, underlining the mistake his father committed by evacuating tribals from interior areas during the Salwa Judum years.

Sori, called a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International, got bail from the Supreme Court last month and the AAP soon gave her a ticket, amid protests by a section in Chhattisgarh because of the pending cases.

“I will follow Gandhiji’s ideals and transform Bastar. People are given guns instead of education; women face atrocities. We tribals are the victims of both Naxals and police. We will have to fight our own battle,” she told a rally in Bastar. The AAP has no presence in Bastar, and the party is banking solely on her appeal. A tribal teacher of a remote village in Dantewada has suddenly become a prominent face as the party membership in Bastar zone has crossed 15,000.

The party seeks votes by generating sympathy for her. It has issued an advertisement in newspapers that says: “I, Soni Sori, am a poor, helpless and powerless daughter of Bastar who received support from the entire world but got only intolerable pain, extreme insults and inhuman torture in my own home Bastar… I want to live — but am unable to live. What is my fault? Hoping to meet you.”

Story continues below this ad

Overseeing her campaign is Delhi-based businessman Anil Singh. A Jagdalpur hotel is his temporary residence and the party headquarters in Bastar. The party is making arrangements to shift Sori too to Jagdalpur.

The AAP defends its decision. “She was victimised, and she is one of 3,000 tribals jailed without charges and trial. The basic charge against her is that Naxals visited her school, but they visit many schools and meet many villagers. We opted for this Bastar ki beti,” says Sanket Thakur, Chhattisgarh convener of AAP.

Of the seven cases she faced, six were slapped within 30 days in July-August 2010 and the seventh in 2011, this one involving an Essar-Maoist payoff. She has been acquitted in five, a sixth is under trial and the Essar case is yet to see charges framed.

Her opponent and his father had led a ragtag gang of tribals against Maoists. During the assembly elections, Deepak said it had been a mistake by his father to have taken the help of the Raman Singh government and police during Salwa Judum as it gave the tribal uprising a government-sponsored face.

Story continues below this ad

“People talk of dialogue. Naxals have issued a farmaan against my family that if we try to campaign we will be kidnapped or killed. The administration has prevented me from visiting interior areas. But my people want me. I will go where no one goes. Let them kill me,” says Deepak. He, his MLA mother Devati and three brothers have Z-Plus security.

The seat has for two decades been with the BJP , which has fielded Dinesh Kashyap. The last non-BJP winner was Mahendra Karma in the 1990s, then an independent.