Why the shock defeat in Chhattisgarh will hurt Congress the most
There was hardly anyone outside of the BJP who expected the Congress to fare poorly in Chhattisgarh, which Bhupesh Baghel governed like a welfare state
Even amid the unexpected drubbing the Congress has received in the four state Assembly elections, it is the shock defeat in Chhattisgarh that will cause it the most pain – and understandably so.
Besides exit polls, most political observers were confident of a BJP win in Rajasthan and said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will have an upper hand in Madhya Pradesh.
But there was hardly anyone outside of the BJP who had expected the Congress to fare poorly in Chhattisgarh, which chief minister Bhupesh Baghel had governed since 2018 like a welfare state.
Baghel’s policies that enriched the farmers and others in rural areas had been expected to provide the Congress with a solid base among the non-urban voters across the state.
One of Baghel’s most popular programmes was the decision to buy cow dung at Rs 2 a kilo from cattle owners and turn them into vermipost in women-run self help groups that were then sold back to the farming community.
Baghel kept claiming all through his reign that his policies had put a lot of money in the hands of the rural population and that this had helped the state’s economy also to perform well.
Congress confidence
This was also the main reason that not just Baghel but even the Congress was supremely confident of retaining power in Chhattisgarh, whatever the outcome in the other states that also went to the polls in November.
But shockingly, in contrast to the 68 of the 90 seats the Congress swept in 2018 and the 75 Baghel claimed it will win this time, the party was crawling at around 38 seats.
On the other hand, the BJP, which was supposed to be in the dumps until Assembly elections were called, has crossed the half-way mark and is confident of returning to power in Chhattisgarh which it ruled for 15 years until 2018.
The man most jubilant in Chhattisgarh is former chief minister and BJP’s best-known leader Raman Singh.
“People know that Congress guarantees are fake,” he told the media, as it became clear that the Congress was on its way out. “Bhupesh Baghel did not fulfil his election promises. That is why people believed in Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi’s guarantees.”
The BJP’s state president, Rajya Sabha member Arun Sao, was more emphatic. “The Congress has ruined the state in the last five years,” he told reporters.
Anger went unnoticed
Chief Minister Baghel, who could have played a larger role in the Congress if he had led the Congress to victory, was stunningly trailing in Patna, his constituency where the BJP had fielded one of his relatives to take him on.
All exit polls on November 30 gave the Congress an edge over the BJP in Chhattisgarh, with one predicting that the party could win as many as 57 seats in contrast to the BJP’s 33.
The Congress had won 68 seats in 2018, leaving the BJP licking with just 15 seats.
But the BJP’s dramatic comeback is now being attributed to the aggression Prime Minister Narendra Modi showed in his campaign speeches in which he dubbed Baghel “corrupt”.
Simultaneously, home minister Amit Shah injected a certain cohesiveness into the state BJP when it was struggling to invent ways to take on what looked like a formidable Congress, particularly after the latter’s victory in Karnataka.
In the end, the story had a most unpredictable end. Along with Baghel, most Congress ministers in Chhattisgarh are trailing – a sign that the simmering anger among the voters went largely unnoticed.
