In Ajit Jogi's seat, the mystery of many namesakes

Raipur: Ajit Jogi is contesting election from Mahasamund constituency. He is arguably the most well known candidate from the Congress—or any party for that matter—in Chhattisgarh. His opponent from the BJP is the incumbent Chandu Sahu.

This should have made a straightforward story. But trust any story to remain straight when it involves Jogi. This one is no exception. Jogi is up against not one or two, but a full team of eleven Chandu Sahus. One of them is the BJP candidate and the rest his namesake.

All the Chandus, barring the BJP one, have many things in common, besides belonging to the same parliamentary constituency. The security deposits of most of them were paid with the currency notes bearing the same serial number; the nomination forms for at least four of them were bought by the same person (“I was on my way to buy one when three more Chandus met me on the way and asked me to buy for them too” was the answer when the buyer was asked later); most of them subsist below poverty line; all of them were found to be untraceable after filing out the nominations. The recorded announcement on their mobile phones indicated their location to be in Odisha, till they returned to their villages past the time for withdrawal – and so on.

If these Chandus are put up by someone to confuse the voters or to make use of their expense limits or to use them to push in more election and counting agents into the restricted areas, well, no law, prevents such a thing from happening and it has happened in Mahasamund.

More so it’s a problem for the BJP to sort out.

Mahasamund is considered one of the seats with the brightest prospects for the Congress in the state. Yet the party has reasons to worry, and the Congress candidates in other constituencies reasons to dread.

Ajit Jogi, when he is fighting an election, is known to invite/attract/summon his supporters from across the state to his constituency affecting the result elsewhere. This has happened earlier.

Example: Kharsia assembly segment in neighboring Raigarh parliamentary constituency is considered the safest vote island of the party. When Arjun Singh was required to get elected to the Madhya Pradesh assembly through a by-election on his return from Punjab Raj Bhawan in 1988, he had chosen this seat and had won. This segment had the history of uninterrupted wins for the Congress in all elections since it came into being in 1977. The record broke—only once—in 2004 Lok Sabha elections when Ajit Jogi was the candidate from Mahasamund. The Kharsia MLA Nand Kumar Patel, like many others from other parts of the state, left with his supporters to work in Mahasamund which has a sizable presence of Aghariyas – Patel’s cast. Congress trailed in Kharsia segment. The Congress lost Raigarh seat. In fact, it lost in all the seats of the state except Mahasamund. Jogi was the sole party MP for the next five years. In the recently held assembly elections, the Jogi supporters en block trooped out of Bilaspur to work in the neighboring constituencies of Jogi’s son and wife leaving the Vani Rao, the official candidate in Bilaspur, fretting in the absence of necessary hands. She lost.

Notwithstanding the results of the recently held assembly elections in which the party won only one segment leaving six for the BJP and one for the BJP rebel independent, Mahasamund retains the reputation of being a Congress stronghold. The area has provided seats of choice to the family of Ravi Shankar Shukla – the first chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. After him, his sons Shyama Charan and Vidya Charan and the grandson Amitesh, all have fought and won elections from this area. Vidya Charan was killed in the Naxal ambush last year in Bastar that saw the party’s top leadership eliminated. His daughter Pratibha Pandey was one of the aspirants for the party nomination till the last moment.

Yet, if the seat was in great demand within the Congress the explanation is simple. The Congress had committed the cardinal mistake of bypassing the frame work touted as Rahul formula and had repeated the sitting MLAs most of whom were in the assembly in the first place courtesy Ajit Jogi. Jogi remained loyal to them and fought for their tickets and got it for them, so what if they lost. Now it’s their turn to return the favour and all of them are doing it diligently. The anti-incumbency factor which worked against the sitting Congress MLAs then has lost its edge now. Most of the other sitting MLAs in the outgoing assembly in 2013 were Jogi loyalists too. Almost all of were given tickets, most of them lost and almost all of them have abandoned their constituencies and have gravitated with their supporters and resources to Mahasamund in this election.

The BJP here, like elsewhere in the state, is bent on imitating what the Congress did in 2013 realizing the perils rather late (not many observers agree that the realization has dawned upon them yet). It has repeated most of its sitting MPs without giving even a fleeting thought to the threat of heavy anti-incumbency that its many times MPs are facing from the electorate now.

Chandu Sahu of Mahasamund—the genuine one of the eleven Chandus—is no exception. The low profile and rather small time party functionary became known in the constituency and outside after getting elected in the last election. The Congress for the first time had gambled in this constituency with what is referred to these days as social engineering. It gave ticket to another Sahu – Motilal to take on Chandu Sahu of the BJP. The only result that the experiment produced was that Chandu Sahu was proved more acceptable within the dominant agrarian Sahus in the area than Motilal. The rest of the communities more or less stuck to their traditional party preferences and the BJP emerged victorious.

Motilal Sahu was an aspirant for this round too and on being denied ticket has since left Congress and joined BJP. But it is the non-Sahu voters especially the tribals and the SCs – considered to be the natural constituencies of Jogi who are enjoying the new found attention.

Chandulal Sahu—the genuine one—in the meanwhile is having a tough time explaining his contribution (or lack of it) towards the development of the area and his activities in the parliament in the last five years. Jogi owes no explaining - he has only promises to sell. And he has done it successfully in the past. Only Modi (to a large extent) if his name works here, and Raman (to a smaller extent) can salvage this seat for the BJP.