Fall of the fortress

While Rajnandgaon is the home turf of Chief Minister Raman Singh and his MP son Abhishek Singh, Jashpur is the bastion of party stalwart Dilip Singh Judeo.

Rajnandgaon has six seats — a mayor and five nagar panchayat presidents. The chief minister’s personal machinery worked hard during the campaign but the BJP lost, with Congress grabbing four of the six seats.

Similarly, the tribal district of Jashpur has a municipality and four nagar panchayats. For the past 40 years, the royal Judeo family held its sway here, reducing the Congress to being just another player. But last Sunday the roles reversed — Congress captured the Jashpur municipality and three nagar panchayats. “We have liberated the area. It seems we are going there the first time after Independence,” said Congress spokesperson Shailesh Nitin Trivedi, failing to recall when the party last won here.
Zone by zone, the results show BJP fell as five of its six mayors lost in Jagdalpur, Ambikapur, Raigarh, Chirmiri and Korba — a clear sign of public anger against the state government.

Although BJP wrested two mayoral seats from the Congress, the Congress registered a major gain over its previous tally. In 2009, the BJP had won six of nine municipal corporations, 18 of 32 municipalities and 71 of 127 nagar panchayats — 95 of the total 168. This year, it won just 57 of the total 154. In 2009, the Congress won three municipal corporations, 12 municipalities and 44 nagar panchayats. This year, it won four municipal corporations, 16 municipalities and 50 nagar panchayats. Significantly, only six months ago, BJP had won 10 of the 11 Lok Sabha seats.

The latest vote, more than being pro-Congress, appeared to be anti-BJP as Independents and small parties won two municipal corporations, 7 municipalities and 18 nagar panchayats.

MAJOR SETBACK
While powerful minister Brijmohan Agrawal admitted “the results are a major setback for us”, BJP’s Raipur mayoral candidate Sachhidanand Upasne was candid after his loss. “It’s the defeat of the party, not of the candidates,” he said. Entire party had thrown its might behind the Raipur seat — assembly seats of Agrawal and Singh’s favourite minister Rajesh Moonat and Lok Sabha seat of seven-time MP Ramesh Bais. Singh had held road shows here and BJP national president Amit Shah had also visited.  “The results are unexpected. We will review it,” said Singh.

In Raigarh too, the seat of union minister Vishnu Deo Sai, Singh held a road show. But such was the public dissent against the BJP mayor that they elected a transgender, who fought as an Independent. Similar was the fate in Bastar — that played a decisive role in the formation of the Raman Singh government, giving the BJP 11 of the 12 seats in the 2003 and 2008 assembly polls. The BJP could win only seven of the 19 municipal seats here. In Jagdalpur, the headquarters of southern Bastar, the BJP lost its mayoral seat to Congress’s Jatin Jayaswal.

WOMEN’S WRATH
The BJP’s fall can be attributed to the dissent reflected in the people’s participation in the polls, especially of women. At a record 77.77 per cent, not only this election saw more polling than any other polls in Chhattisgarh so far, women with 77.55 per cent almost equaled male voters (78.02 per cent). Women voters outnumbered men in 44 per cent or 66 of the total 154 seats. Of these 66, BJP lost 45, nearly 70 per cent. Women voters also outnumbered men in four municipal corporations where BJP had sitting mayors — Ambikapur, Jagdalpur, Raigarh and Chirmiri. The party lost them all.

Women have been the worst sufferers of the state government’s recent failures. The fake ration card scam hit them as ration cards were made in the name of the eldest woman of a household. When such cards were being deleted, many eligible families were also affected and their ration was withheld for months. Hundreds of women queued up for weeks outside the government offices for renewal of their cards. Women were also the victims of botched-up tubectomy operations and fraudulent removal of the uterus. While the uterus case had surfaced in 2012, only last month the government reopened the cases against the guilty doctors after the sterilization cases surfaced.

LOSS OF FACE
The man hurt most by the results is Chief Minister Raman Singh, who personally led the campaign, and his face was more prominent than the candidate’s in most posters. While the BJP has defended Singh, some ministers have quietly renewed demands of his ouster.
PCC chief Bhupesh Baghel has begun terming him as “Ciprocin Wala Baba”, referring to spurious medicine given by government doctors after the sterilizations that caused the death of 13 women in November. The Congress is preparing a strategy to aggressively use this phrase to counter his epithet of “Chaur (rice) Wala Baba”.

Citing the result, Baghel said on Tuesday, “The BJP has badly lost. Ciprocin Wala Baba has no right to rule now.”

THE GAINERS
The Congress performance has cemented the place of Baghel and leader of opposition T S Sinhadev. While Baghel went to the elections without placating the demands of former chief minister Ajit Jogi, Sinhadev led the party’s victory in northern Chhattisgarh. The results also changed the political equations. Jogi, after declaring his withdrawal from the elections, on Tuesday sent feelers to the Baghel camp and also participated in the victory rally in Raipur.

Chhattisgarh goes to panchayat polls in January and public dissent over paddy procurement would emerge as a more prominent electoral issue in the rural areas. The powerful farmer lobby is annoyed with Singh for his failure to lift paddy as promised earlier.
It will be yet another test for the chief minister — and a measurement of  his popularity.