Months after losing the Assembly polls, the Congress entered the Lok Sabha poll ring in Chhattisgarh to put that loss behind it and improve on its 2019 tally of two seats. Four constituencies in Chhattisgarh voted in the first two phases and the remaining seven will go to the polls on Tuesday. These are Raipur, the state capital, Bilaspur, Korba, Durg, the SC-reserved Janjgir-Champa, and the two ST-reserved seats of Raigarh and Sarguja.
The uphill task that awaits the Congress is encapsulated by the fact that the BJP won 10 of the 11 Lok Sabha seats in the 2004, 2009 and 2014 elections and even after losing the Assembly polls in 2018 it managed to win nine of the 11 constituencies last time around.
The BJP’s campaign was heavily dependent on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who addressed rallies in Janjgir-Champa and Sarguja, and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who addressed rallies in Korba, Janjgir-Champam and Bemetara (for the Durg seat). For the Congress, its former president Rahul Gandhi addressed a rally in Bilaspur and Priyanka Gandhi spoke at a public meeting in Chirmiri (for Korba).
Of these seven seats, a close contest is expected in Korba and Janjgir-Champa. In the latter, a primarily agrarian constituency that the BJP has held since 2004, farmers have benefitted from the policies of the former Congress government and the Opposition party currently controls all eight Assembly segments.
Here, the Congress has fielded its top Scheduled Caste (SC) leader and former minister Shivkumar Dahariya, who lost his Assembly seat last year. To ensure there is no anti-incumbency, the BJP dropped its sitting MP Guharam Ajgalley and gave the ticket to Kamlesh Jangde, a former sarpanch. As in 2019, when the BJP beat the Congress by 83,255 votes, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) — which got 1.31 lakh votes — will play a crucial role this time.
In Korba, the Congress’s Jyotsna Mahant is defending her seat against BJP’s state vice-president Saroj Pandey, a former MP in both houses of Parliament. Jyotsna is the wife of Congress Leader of Opposition Charan Das Mahant. Known as Chhattisgarh’s power capital and industrial hub, Korba’s biggest problem is air and water pollution due to coal mining, with dams for the fly ash from coking coal remaining under-utilised. Both candidates have also promised to resolve Korba’s poor railway connectivity. Another major issue is the deforestation of the sacred Hasdeo grove.
Among the seats that the BJP is hoping to bag comfortably are urban Raipur and tribal Sarguja. In the state capital, it has never lost since 1996 and its candidate is eight-time MLA and five-time minister Brijmohan Agrawal. Against him, the Congress has fielded youth leader and former MLA Vikas Upadhyay.
In Sarguja, which BJP has never lost since 2004, it won all eight Assembly segments, as well as all 14 segments in the region in the Assembly polls. Its candidate Chintamani Maharaj is a Congress turncoat who joined the BJP a month before the state elections after being denied a ticket. His name had also cropped up in the Enforcement Directorate (ED) coal levy corruption case, for accepting kickbacks. After Maharaj’s name was not included in the list of accused in the ED’s FIR that named other Congress leaders, the Congress alleged he had been “washed in BJP’s washing machine after he switched sides”.
Maharaj faces Congress youth leader Shashi Singh, the daughter of former state minister Tuleshwar Singh. BJP workers in the constituency were upset that the ticket was given to a new entrant to the party. The only silver lining for the Congress, none of whose top leaders barring T S Singh Deo campaigned in Sarguja, is the 20-year anti-incumbency facing the BJP.
Chhattisgarh in numbers
(Source: state Chief Electoral Officer)
The other seats at stake
Since 1996, the Congress has managed to win Durg just once — during the Modi wave of 2014 — when Tamradhwaj Sahu bagged it. In 2019, BJP’s Vijay Baghel, the estranged nephew of former Congress CM Bhupesh Baghel, won by a massive 3.92 lakh votes. Vijay, who wrote the BJP’s 2023 Assembly poll manifesto, is among two candidates repeated by the BJP this time. The Congress, which is banking on Sahu votes, has fielded Rajendra Sahu who has led Bhupesh Baghel’s poll campaigns in the past.
In Bilaspur, Congress has fielded two-time MLA Devendra Yadav, who won last year’s Assembly election by a wafer-thin margin of 1,264 votes, against the BJP’s former MLA Tokhan Sahu. Yadav is among those whose name cropped up in the coal levy case.
Meanwhile, the BJP has never lost the Raigarh seat since 1999, with CM Vishnu Deo Sai winning the seat four consecutive times from 1999 to 2014. Gomati Sai, who won the seat in 2019, is now a BJP MLA. This time, the party has fielded grassroots worker Radheshyam Rathiya against the Congress’s Dr Menka Devi Singh, whose father Naresh Chandra was the last king of the erstwhile Sarangarh kingdom and a minister in undivided MP.