How Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel got his maths right

The new chief minister predicted the departure of Jogi would benefit the Congress

Bhupesh Baghel, now chief minister of Chhattisgarh, was sitting relaxed  in the party office  in the first week of January 2016. That was soon after the expulsion of Amit Jogi, son of Congress strongman Ajit Jogi, from the Congress. Baghel appeared unperturbed by the development.
 
The fear was that the disciplinary action against his son would propel the senior Jogi, former chief minister, to hit back. But Baghel, Chhattisgarh Congress Committee chief, played it down.
 
“Yes, I agree! Jogi will take away about 4 per cent of the Congress vote,” he responded tranquilly to one of the four members present in the chamber. But the Congress would gain 6 per cent with the exit of Jogi from the party, he exhorted.

 
The calculation did not convince those present. Baghel said a large section of the people were not voting for the Congress because of Jogi, who finally quit the Congress and formed the Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (JCC) in June 2016.
 
the vote, the Congress’s net gain was 2 per cent. Because of Jogi’s terror and the fear that he would come to power, people were not supporting the Congress, Baghel explained.
 
Baghel’s calculation upset predictions of most pollsters who predicted a fourth term for the BJP in Chhattisgarh. As predicted by Baghel, the Congress got 2.67 per cent votes more than in 2013 to increase its seat tally by 29. The party’s tally jumped from 39 seats to 68 and its vote share increased from 40.43 per cent to 43.1 per cent.
 
On the other hand, the BJP’s vote share declined by 8.04 percentage points to 33 per cent, getting for the ruling party an embarrassing 15 seats. The party got 49 in 2013. The JCC secured 7.6 per cent of the vote and bagged five seats while its ally, the Bahujan Samaj Party, got two though its vote share dropped 0.37 percentage points to 3.9 per cent.
 
“The strategy of BJP managers that the JCC and its ally will eat into the Congress vote and split the anti-BJP vote did not work,” said Shashank Sharma, a political analyst. While anti-incumbency against the ruling party was intense, people did not vote for the JCC either, fearing it would help the BJP, he added.

 
The spectacular win of the Congress had many reasons that BJP managers had to examine at the micro level. They failed to realise that even their house was not in order as the cadre and party workers were set to vent their fury against their own party. “We failed to realise that anti-incumbency and resentment against the government were so strong,” former chief minister Raman Singh, who led the BJP campaign, admitted. The party failed to get the votes of even its committed voters.
 
The BJP even failed to keep its traditional vote bank intact though the Congress strategy made a dent in it. Congress President Rahul Gandhi fielded the party’s lone Member of Parliament in the state, Tamradhwaj Sahu, to contest election in an overt signal to sway the community’s votes.  The Sahus, who account for more than 16 per cent of the state’s population, shifted their allegiance to the BJP because they felt sidelined when Jogi was chief minister in 2000-03. The community has a decisive presence in 18 seats of the 90 in the state.
 
“Fielding Sahu created a feeling among the community that Tamradhwaj could be chief minister if the Congress was voted to power,” said Sharma. The community voted decisively for the Congress, proved by the fact that only one Sahu of the 14 fielded by the BJP won. The Congress high command even acknowledged this and Tamradhwaj’s name figured top in the race for chief minister. He, however, lost to Bhupesh Baghel, who, along with the then leader of opposition, T S Singhdeo, energised the Congress cadre to campaign against the Raman Singh government.
 
Singhdeo, the Congress’ intellectual face, meticulously crafted the poll promises, which proved a winner. The farm loan waiver, hike in minimum support prices (MSP) for paddy, and reducing power tariffs by half, which were included in the promises, paid the desired dividend and the BJP failed to top that.
 
Soon after assuming office on December 17, Baghel issued the order on increasing MSPs and the loan waiver. The Congress government also decided to return the land of 1,707 farmers acquired for Tata Steel’s mega project in Bastar. The land was, however, not allotted to Tata Steel, which dropped the plan for a 5.5-million-tonne per annum plant in 2016.
 
Of the decisions, the crucial one was a major surgery in the bureaucracy. Officials in the eye of the storm of even the BJP cadre were pushed to the loop line.
 
A task, literally, Singh dared not do.