Chhattisgarh polls: Why Rajnandgaon is no longer a safe seat for former CM Raman Singh

Sidelined by his party, the BJP, since the Congress’s massive assembly poll win of 2018, and with his political heft greatly diminished, Singh is in the poll fray, once again, from Rajnandgaon. Though he retains the goodwill of his voters, who wax eloquent about the constituency's progress under "Dr Raman" - good roads, improvement in civic infrastructure, construction of colleges and hospitals, et al, there are ample signs to show that Singh's bid to retain the seat for a fourth consecutive term is no cakewalk.

Listening to voters in Rajnandgaon speak about Singh's victory prospects, it is difficult to not defer to the wisdom of the dreadfully delightful George R R Martin's quip about dismissing everything in a sentence that precedes "but". After all, even apparently direct responses by the people to questions on the stakes in an Indian election can be as treacherous as Martin's

Game of Thrones.

The challenges before Singh in Rajnandgaon are manifold, even if he remains a frontrunner to win the seat he had finally settled on 15 years ago, after having won previously from Dongargaon (in 2004) and his hometurf of Kawardha (in 1990 and 1993). Five years of being treated like a pariah within the party he once steered to three consecutive wins in Chhattisgarh has significantly dented the public perception of Singh's standing in the BJP.

With practically nothing to do in his role as the BJP's national vice-president to which he was 'elevated', after the party's 2018 rout in Chhattisgarh, Singh has been away from active grassroots politics for five years. That's a long time in politics and CM Bhupesh Baghel utilised this period to the fullest to undermine the 15-year legacy of Singh.

While Baghel moved from strength to strength, consolidating his and the Congress’s electoral base in the state over the past five years, Singh and even his son, former Rajnandgaon MP Abhishek Singh, saw a steady decline in their political influence, within the BJP as well as in Chhattisgarh.

BJP sources, some of whom were once considered Singh's protégés, conceded to The Federal that the former CM's marginalisation within the party was so complete that many believed he would be benched in the current election. That Singh featured as the BJP's candidate from Rajnandgaon, a senior party leader said, was "only because we had no other winning candidate in Rajnandgaon".

The diminishing of Singh's stature is not lost on his constituents, who recall his work in Rajnandgaon fondly, even sympathise with him but are now vocally accepting, at times almost apologetically, of the prospect of voting for his present rival, the Congress’s Girish Dewangan. Ironically, while the BJP's electoral pitch of  'badal ke rahibo' urging voters to rout the Congress government finds little resonance across Chhattisgarh, it seems to be working against Singh in Rajnandgaon.

"Dr Raman had done a lot for Rajnandgaon but that was when he was CM. The Congress is in power now and many people here think Rajnandgaon will progress more if the local MLA is from the Congress; if Dr Raman loses, it won't be because the vote was against him but because it was for the Congress and for the constituency," says Santosh Yadav, a resident of Rajnandgaon's Vivekanand Nagar locality.

Rajeev Shankar Mahant, a shop owner in the constituency's Bharka Para area says Singh would find it "very difficult" to win this time as he has lost touch with the voters and has "hardly been active here in the last five years".

"When even the BJP has refused to give him any prominence, why will the people vote for him. There is no denying that Raman Singh introduced social welfare and development politics to Chhattisgarh but, in the last five years, Bhupesh Baghel has taken that model of governance to the next level. There is nothing Raman Singh can do for Rajnandgaon now even if he wins because the government will be of Congress, so why should we not vote for the Congress candidate," Mahant says.

There is more than a palpable undercurrent of support for Singh's Congress rival. Though not a political heavyweight, Dewangan seems to be fast catching up with Singh, in part because of his well-known proximity to Baghel and, in part, on account of the caste arithmetic in Rajnandgaon.

Rajnandgaon has an estimated population of over 1.50 lakh voters who belong to various backward classes. The weaving community, to which Dewangan belongs, is amongst the largest backward caste groups in the constituency. The Congress is hopeful that OBC consolidation in Dewangan's favour would help him trounce Singh, an upper class Thakur.

Congress insiders also told The Federal that the constituency's voting pattern in the 2018 polls also showed that the backward castes had voted in large numbers against Singh, even though the Congress had fielded an upper caste candidate, the late Karuna Shukla, a Brahmin and former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's niece, against him. Shukla had managed to reduce Singh's victory margin to just about 17,000 in Rajnandgaon; less than half the lead with which Singh had first won the constituency back in 2008.

It is no surprise that the Congress's most vociferous push during the Chhattisgarh campaign for rolling out a caste census came from Rajnandgaon during Priyanka Gandhi's recent rally in the constituency.

"There are over 1.5 lakh OBCs in Rajnandgaon and if the caste census pitch strikes a chord with them in Rajnandgaon it could swing the election outcome against Raman Singh. Like Dewangan, the Congress has fielded two dozen other OBC candidates. Our CM is also an OBC. All of this will obviously have an impact on how people vote," a close aide of Bhupesh Baghel told The Federal.

Besides his caste identity, Dewangan is also banking on his widely acknowledged proximity to Baghel to help him win Rajnandgaon. Throughout Rajnandgaon, countless campaign hoardings show blown-up images of Baghel and Dewangan side by side, alluding to the latter being the "CM's choice" in Rajnandgaon.

"It's a clever strategy," says a senior Congress leader, claiming that the hoardings convey to the voters that "if Raman Singh is a former CM, Congress is giving you a replacement who is among the leaders closest to the current CM - your progress will not suffer if you vote for him".

Dewangan, on his part, does not make any sweeping claims of an imminent victory. Though a debutante in the electoral arena, Dewangan is a seasoned Congress politician with nearly four decades in public life behind him.

He artfully dodges giving a direct answer to questions on his victory prospects and says, "I do not see this as an election between individuals; the work that the Congress has done in the past five years is before the public and the people know they can trust Bhupesh Baghel. I am going to the people as a representative of the Congress and of Bhupesh Baghel; it is for the public to now decide whether they can trust Girish Dewangan or if they want to vote again for someone who will only make promises but not deliver."

The voters in Rajnandgaon will decide on November 7 on who they trust more with their vote. What is evident though is that Rajnandgaon is no more the 'safe seat' that 71-year-old Raman Singh could blindly bank on for his stint as a legislator.