2024 Lok Sabha elections: Deo Sai looks to maintain Raigarh momentum

For the 2024 elections, BJP has fielded Radheshyam Rathiya against Congress' Menka Devi Singh

For Chhattisgarh’s Chief Minister, Vishnu Deo Sai, ensuring that BJP retains Raigarh would be a matter of prestige. From 1999 to 2014, Sai bagged this Lok Sabha constituency for four consecutive polls. Raigarh polls on May 7.

In 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dropped him to field Gomati Sai from this seat reserved for Scheduled Tribes. Gomati won the election, but has since quit after she was elected to the Pathalgaon assembly seat in last Vidhan Sabha polls. Both, Vishnu Deo Sai and Gomti Sai, are legislators from assembly seats that fall within the Raigad Lok Sabha constituency.

For the 2024 elections, BJP has fielded Radheshyam Rathiya. He faces Congress’ Menka Devi Singh, a doctor, and a member of the erstwhile Gond royal family of Sarangarh. In 1980 and 1984, the family’s Pushpa Devi Singh, won as a Congress candidate from the seat. She lost to BJP’s Nand Kumar Sai in 1989, wrested the seat in 1991 but eventually lost to Nand Kumar Sai again in 1996. In 1999, the Congress fielded her again but she lost to Vishnu Deo Sai.

Pushpa and Menka Devi’s father, Raja Nareschandra Singh, was a minister in the Congress government in undivided Madhya Pradesh from 1952 to 1968. He was the only tribal CM of undivided Madhya Pradesh. 

Several other members of the family including Menka’s mother, Lalita Devi, was a legislator, as was another sister, Kamla Devi. A fourth sister, Rajnigandha, was an MP from Raigarh in 1967. With Menka Devi’s entry into the poll battle, the family has made a return to electoral politics after 25 years.

While the Sarangarh’s erstwhile royal family has pockets of influence, it will have to contend with the influence of other prominent families of the region which are with the BJP, including Jashpur’s Judev family. 

The BJP has also sent Devendra Pratap Singh, a scion of the Gond royal family from Raigarh, to the Rajya Sabha. But the Congress is enthused about the seat as it won four of the eight Assembly seats in the December polls, with the BJP winning four. 

However, of the seven candidates with a royal family connection who contested on these seats, none could win, including the then deputy CM TS Singh Deo and two from the Judev family. In 1962, Vijay Bhushan Singh, a member of the erstwhile Jashpur royal family, had won the Raigarh LS seat as an Akhil Bharatiya Ram Rajya Parishad candidate.