The elections in Rajnandgaon, and the question of Raman Singh’s fate
The upcoming elections in Rajnandgaon, Chhattisgarh will determine the political fate of former chief minister Raman Singh. The Congress is aggressively campaigning against him, while the BJP believes Singh's influence will help them win. Other factors such as ticket distribution and farmer issues will also play a role in the elections. The results will be declared on December 3.
Just on the outskirts of Rajnandgaon town, 28-year old Yogesh Sahu is serving tea to his customers at a small roadside shack, surrounded by political conversation. There are after all, less than four days for Rajnandgaon to go to vote, with elections for the seat scheduled on November 7. This is also, after all, the seat of former chief minister Raman Singh; a man that ruled Chhattisgarh for fifteen years between 2003 and 2008; the man for whom many political obituaries were written but is contesting elections again.
This time, Sahu says there is something different in the air. “It seems like the entire Congress leadership is in the city and that Congress chief minister Bhupesh Baghel himself is fighting against Raman Singh,” Sahu says.
Twenty of the 90 assembly seats in Chhattisgarh will go to polls on November 7 – the first phase of elections in the state, and the results will be declared on December 3.
While 12 of the seats fall in the left-wing extremism hit Bastar, eight others are in the four districts in and around Rajnandgaon – that have historically had the shadow of Raman Singh. Apart from the former chief minister himself, fighting for the third time from Rajnandgaon, at least two others of the eight seats, are people related to him.
Rajnandgaon, the biggest town in the region, and the district headquarters has had a Raman Singh connection for the last 25 years. It is in the Lok Sabha seat where Singh first made his mark, beating Congress veteran Motilal Vora in 1998, and becoming a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee cabinet. He has fought the assembly polls since 2008 from Rajnandgaon and in 2018, beat the Congress’s Karuna Shukla with a margin of just short of seventeen thousand votes.
The Congress candidate against him is state Congress’s general secretary Girish Dewangan, a member of the Other Backward Classes (OBC), known to be close to chief minister Baghel. “It is new that the Congress is aggressively pushing its election in Rajnandgaon. The party is united in wanting to upset Raman Singh and the party is keeping a close eye on it. Raman Singh was not active for the past four and a half years, and in the urban slums, the Congress has been able to build a base,” a senior Congress leader said.
The BJP on the other hand said that while it is clear the Congress wants to confine Raman Singh to the constituency, Dewangan is from Dharsiwa in Raipur, is an outsider, and will ultimately fall short. “In the last election, Karuna Shukla brought down Raman Singh’s winning margin considerably and it’s the same strategy this time. But rural pockets may see some Congress influence, but we command a big lead in urban and semi-urban areas,” a BJP leader said.
Overall, in the eight seats, the Congress currently holds seven seats and the BJP one seat. Leaders said that other than Singh’s influence, there are other factors that will dominate the elections -- ranging from ticket local dissatisfaction, farmer issues and ticket distribution. In Khujji seat for instance, of the four seats in Rajnandgaon district, the Congress dropped sitting candidate Channi Sahu, considered close to state deputy chief minister TS Singhdeo. The BJP has fielded Gita Sahu, the district president who is from the OBC Sahu community, while the Congress has fielded Bholaram Sahu, also recently promoted to district president, and considered close to Baghel. Queering the pitch is the Hamar Raj Party, the political wing of the tribal Sarv Adivasi Samaj in a seat that has a considerable tribal population. “The thing that is working in favour of the Congress is a sizeable farmer population that is thus far with the Congress, but it is a close fight,” a Congress leader said.
A local BJP leader however said that Lalita Paikra, the tribal candidate from Hamar Raj Party would work in their favour. “She is a Kanwar tribal and could cut into the Congress votes, which is why we feel the BJP has the edge in this seat,” a BJP leader said.
In the Khairagarh seat, the BJP has fielded the nephew of Raman Singh, Vikrant Singh against sitting MLA Yashoda Verma and in Pandariya, the BJP has fielded Bhavna Bora. The Congress, in an acknowledgement of anti-incumbency against its sitting MLA, has also switched candidate to Neelkhant Chandravanshi. “The difficulty of the BJP is that in all three seats of Kawardha, Pandariya and Khairagarh, its candidates are upper caste while the majority of voters are OBC,” said a Raipur based BJP leader.
But the other crucial seat that is a dipstick for the communal temperature in Chhattisgarh is Kawardha, where Congress minister Mohammad Akbar is seeking re-election, and faces Vijay Sharma of the BJP, a former Bajrang Dal leader. In October 2021, communal violence roiled the district for which more than 80 people were booked. Among those accused were Abhishek Singh, Raman Singh’s son and former MP and Vijay Sharma. In 2018, Akbar had won by a margin of 59,284 votes. “Akbar’s vote margin will decrease but he still has an edge because he has been available for the people of his constituency,” a Congress leader said.
The BJP thus far has not announced a chief ministerial candidate for Chhattisgarh, choosing instead to contest with Prime Minister Narendra Modi front and centre. Asked if the state unit was working under him, in an interview to HT last week, Raman Singh had said, “Whether it is 2003,2008 or 2018, BJP never projected Dr Raman Singh as Chief Minister. After the elections, it is decided by the legislative group. Even now there is collective leadership.”
But it is clear that whether or not he is the state’s chief minister for the fourth time, Singh’s relevance is inextricably linked to the BJP’s performance in Rajnandgaon.
There is no doubt hat Raman Singh is presently the tallest leader of Chhattisgarh and contests from the Rajnandgaon seat. Before 2018 he definitely had an impact on almost all the neighboring seats but after that he has definitely lost some ground in the nearby seats. His inactiveness on the ground in the last five years is one of the reasons. It is a fact that at some seats he has considerable impact but definitely the result in these eight seats may reflect his stature in the party and among the people ,” said Harsh Dubey ,a political commentator based in Chhattisgarh.
