Despite an Upcoming Battle of the Mayors, a Deathly Silence Grips Raipur

No other state appears to be as uninterested in the 2019 general elections as Chhattisgarh.

The state capital Raipur, which is the battleground between two mayors, is going about its daily life. The apathy is nearly as stunning as the early April heat that has already inched above 41 degrees celsius.

The elections in Raipur have taken an adventurous turn for the first time in 30 years. Since 1989, the BJP has had only one name for Raipur – Ramesh Bais, who won every contest he fought, so much so that in 1991, when V.C. Shukla won the seat by the thinnest of margins of 900 votes, based on a petition filed by Bais, the Jabalpur high court struck down the win in 1996, much after the Lok Sabha term had expired.

Shukla went on to become the second most powerful person in Narasimha Rao’s ministry until his death in 2013 in a Naxal attack.

This time, the BJP Kurmi strongman from Raipur has been ignored for an OBC Sunar from Rajasthan – former mayor Sunil Soni.

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One of the reasons behind why Bais reign remained unchallenged in Raipur was his caste, which dominates the seat. The rural assembly segments of the Raipur Lok Sabha constituency are almost entirely claimed by Kurmis, who number around 40% overall. Congress’ failure to find a Kurmi leader of substance in Raipur also played its part. The party had found one in Kiranmayee Nayak, who easily won the mayoral stakes in 2009, but he has since been sidelined.

The Congress has mostly depended on Brahmin candidates – V.C. Shukla and Keyur Bhushan won twice from Raipur in the 1980s, but could not breach the Kurmi wall after 1996. In fact, the 2014 election was lost by Satyanarain Sharma by a margin of more than two lakh votes.

Raipur mayor Pramod Dube has been entrusted with the responsibility of winning the Kurmi bastion for the Congress after more than eight general elections. He is backed by chief minister Bhupesh Baghel who himself lost against Bais in 2009.

A Kurmi himself, Baghel had managed to close the gap to 50,000 votes, which was considered a respectable performance by most.

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Pramod Dube has climbed the political ladder the hard way – he was president of Ravishankar Shukla University back in the 1980s and a member of the NSUI, Youth Congress and even the bus operator’s union.

At 53, he is considered by many to be the right age, and to have the right amount of charism to take on Soni. He has now established as a local leader of substance and has done well in business too.

“My work will speak for itself. I have provided direct employment opportunities to thousands of youth in the city,” said Dube, who has worked towards sanctioning prime areas within the city to food vendors. Dube had even came up with a specially purpose built design for vendor carts, and hundreds were distributed to unemployed youth and women at low interest rates.

Soni, on the other hand, was mayor from 2002 to 2009 but made a mess of several development projects. He later became the chairman of Raipur Development Authority under the Raman Singh government, but has no notable achievement to his name.

But where he scores is his strong base outside the main city area. As the city expanded over the past 20 years, he sat over several important housing development projects in the expansion areas. This brought him in contact with rural constituents and Dube will have to watch out for the strong support that Soni might drum up there.

There are six general seats in Chattisgarh, besides the five reserved ones. Congress has sadly decided to play the caste card again in a state which has never voted on caste lines despite the domination of a few castes in a few constituencies.

Baghel has asserted himself in deciding the tickets to all these constituencies save one – Korba, which has gone to speaker Charandas Mahant’s wife. He initially put up Pratima Chandrakar, the daughter of Baghel’s political guru Vasudev Chandrakar, the tallest Kurmi leader in the state at one time, from Durg. She was then replaced by Tamradhwaj Sahu at the last moment after she was given an assembly ticket. Now Baghel has given the charge of Durg constituency to Sahu, the only sitting Congress MP from the state in the outgoing Lok Sabha.

Also read: In Chhattisgarh, Probes Into Sins of Previous Regime Run Into Trouble

Dhanendra Sahu, the sitting MLA from Abhanpur and a past PCC president, has been left with no option but to try his luck in the parliamentary elections after having been denied a cabinet berth by Baghel. At any rate, Baghel has also squashed the demands of Amitesh Shukla for a ticket for his son Bhawani from Mahasamund. Bhawani is a fourth generation Shukla who wanted to become a law maker. But pitching Sahu from Mahasamund may be a smart move too in terms of caste voting patterns.

BJP’s Chandulal Sahu won the seat twice in 2009 and 2014 but has been denied the ticket this time. He was a giant killer as he had defeated Ajit Jogi both times. He has been replaced by Chunnilal Sahu who is a former one-term BJP MLA from Khallari.

Baghel acolyte Achal Shrivastava has got the ticket from Bilaspur and Bholaram Sahu from Rajnandgaon. Thus four out of six general seats have gone to the OBC a number matched by the BJP.

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