Blog: How sure is the Congress about its Lok Sabha poll candidates

The Congress is set to announce the first list of its candidates for the coming Lok Sabha elections anytime next week, way ahead of other parties. The list is expected to include nominees from the bulk of, if not all, the eleven seats in Chhattisgarh. The party had lost 10 of these to the BJP in the last round in 2009. The eleventh and the sole winner for the party – Charan Das Mahant is a state minister in the UPA cabinet

According to reports filtering out, the process of discussions at various levels is over and a consensus among the leadership on the names of the potential candidates has emerged. Yet, a few glitches have stopped the leadership from making the announcement of names.

A seat for Ajit Jogi is one of them.

After a stint of 12 years in the Rajya Sabha, Jogi was first elected for Lok Sabha from Raigarh in 1998. He fought and won his next election in 1999 from Shahdol, now in Madhya Pradesh. Within the five years following this election in Shahdol, he quit Lok Sabha, became Chief Minister of the newly created state, fought and won a bye election in 2001 for the assembly from Marwahi, fought and won yet another regular election from Marwahi in the 2003 assembly election, resigned as the Chief Minister when his party failed to muster the numbers to form new government, and was ready to contest the next Lok Sabha elections in 2004.

The seat Jogi opted to contest from in 2004 was Mahasamund. This parliamentary seat, along with its assembly segments, has the history of returning members of the Shukla family – the first Chief Minister Ravi Shankar Shukla was an MLA from Saraipali segment, his elder son Shyama Charan was from another segment Rajim on several occasions, and the younger son Vidya Charan from this parliamentary seat on numerous occasions (Shyama Charan’s son Amitesh has been representing Congress in Rajim segment after his father’s retirement and death).

In the preceding five years much had happened in the Shukla camp too. Vidya Charan Shukla had returned to the Congress fold in the early nineties and was a member of the Narsimha Rao cabinet. When the state of Chhattisgarh was carved out of Madhya Pradesh he was a strong contender for the Chief Minister’s post. However, the high command perhaps as a result of the trust deficit preferred Ajit Jogi over him. This resulted in Shukla quitting the Congress and resurrecting the Nationalist Congress Party in the state well in time for the 2003 assembly elections to the state assembly. His party failed to come to power and he abandoned it and joined the BJP.

The 2004 parliamentary elections in Mahasamund thus saw Vidya Charan Shukla as a BJP candidate against Ajit Jogi from the Congress which the latter won. Incidentally Jogi was the solitary Congress candidate to win that round in the state. Before the Lok Sabha term could end, assembly elections were held in 2008 and Jogi returned to his assembly seat in Marwahi. The Lok Sabha elections in the following year saw his wife contesting and losing Bilaspur seat against Dilip Singh Judeo of the BJP.

Now the state leadership of the party wants Jogi to take over from where his wife had left and fight Lok Sabha polls from Bilaspur. But if Jogi is dithering, one reason is the large scale migration that this region is in the habit of seeing. Between the months of February and June around two lakh poor migrate in search of employment from Bilaspur and surrounding areas of Chhattisgarh. These poor, the Congress likes to believe, are its vote bank and an election in this period is bound to have the effect of their absence.

Another seat that is coming in the way of the announcement of the list is the neighboring Champa-Janjgir - the solitary seat in the state reserved for the Scheduled Castes. The Congress is trying to reach an understanding with the BSP which in turn is eager to stretch the canvass of understanding beyond Uttar Pradesh. Champa-Janjgir, presently held by the BJP, is one such seat BSP would Congress to forfeit in its favour. If this happens at the cost of the BSP support in rest of the seats in the state, the Congress can hope to gain a lot. The SCs are believed to have voted mostly for the BJP in the recent assembly polls when 9 out of 10 seats reserved for the SCs went to the BJP.

The party is not too sure about its choice in Mahasamund too. It feels morally committed to giving ticket to Pratibha Pandey, the daughter of Vidya Charan Shukla who was killed along with the state Congress chief and other party leaders by the Maoists in May last year. Yet the conflicting ground reports on her prospects are creating hurdles in finalizing her name.