Login Register
Follow Us

Cong eschews risk to leave MP race open

The Congress in Madhya Pradesh fretted away a chance to upset incumbent Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in his Budhni Assembly constituency.

Show comments

Rashid Kidwai
Senior Political Commentator

The Congress in Madhya Pradesh fretted away a chance to upset incumbent Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in his Budhni Assembly constituency. Had the Congress fielded one of its big guns — a Jyotiraditya Scindia or a Digvijaya Singh — against Chouhan, the political dividends would have been numerous.

Be it poll survey findings or a general sense of hawa (trend) that is talked about at every tea joint and barber shop in Bhopal, Indore, Jabalpur and Gwalior, Chouhan’s genial, go-getter mama (maternal uncle) image is a singular factor that has kept the ruling BJP in hunt for a record fourth time. So, if Chouhan could be tamed in Budhni, the BJP campaign and poll prospects in other 229 Assembly seats would have suffered considerably. Both Scindia and Digvijaya have strong pockets of support base and goodwill in and around Budhni that could have been translated into votes. However, killer instincts, risk-taking ability and out-of-the-box thinking seems in short supply in the Rahul Gandhi-led Congress.

The political stature of Dr Raman Singh grew after he earned an image of a giant killer in 1999 when he defeated senior Congress leader Motilal Vora from the Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha seat. Raman, currently the longest serving BJP Chief Minister in the carved out Chhattisgarh, was until then, little known politically as he had lost the 1998 Assembly polls from Kawardha.

Rahul may also remember how his father Rajiv Gandhi politically crippled the opposition by fielding Madhavrao Scindia against Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Amitabh Bachchan versus HN Bahugana, Sunil Dutt against Ram Jethmalani in the 1984 General Election that saw powerful opposition leaders losing the polls to virtual political greenhorns. 

Rahul could have taken a leaf out of BJP strategy that it had employed exactly 15 years ago against Digvijaya Singh. The throne got shaky but his electoral fortress in Raghogarh principality remained unquestioned.

In November 2003, the BJP had fielded Shivraj Singh Chouhan, a Lok Sabha MP from Vidisha then, against the Congress Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh. Chouhan lost but succeeded in pinning down Diggy Raja on his home turf even as Uma Bharti and rest of the BJP went on to demolish the Congress. The final tally had the Congress winning merely 38 out of 230 Assembly seats. Digvijay Singh defeated Chouhan by 21,164 votes but the victory margin was reduced by 32,997 as compared to previous 1998 Assembly polls.

Chouhan’s feat was more remarkable in the context of not only Digvijaya’s status as Chief Minister but many in Raghogarh considering Digvijay as ‘Hindupati’ or the defender of the faith, a description that dates back to legendary warrior Prithviraj Chauhan, from whom the family claims descent. Many in the constituency also used to revere Digvijay’s ancestor Maharaj Dhir Singh as the town deity, believing a visit to his shrine can cure snakebite and ward off evil spirits.

While Chouhan had campaigned resolutely and counted heavily on caste votes of his backward Kirars, who comprised about 10 per cent of Raghogarh’s 1.9 lakh-odd voters, Uma Bharti had given little chance to Chouhan. At one stage during the campaign in November 2003, she had even said that she looked forward to seeing Digvijay as the state’s leader of the Opposition.

 A word about Arun Yadav.  Anyone familiar with Madhya Pradesh politics would say a contest between Chouhan and former state Congress chief Arun Yadav is symbolic than a close call. Yadav’s support base on caste lines is thin in the Chief Minister’s constituency and the former Union Minister of State lacks the stature of a Scindia or a Digvijaya Singh.  Moreover, the physical distance from Budhni to Yadav’s Khargone may be similar to that of Scindia’s Guna or Digvijaya’s Raghogarh but in terms of informal regional classification, Yadav comes from a different political territory. His oratory skills, campaign styles etc are also nowhere closer to that of Scindia or Digvijaya.

The Congress leadership may have shied away from fielding Scindia or Digvijaya from Budhni fearing that their presence would make them a chief ministerial candidate. But at an informal level, Scindia has been a formidable candidate in the event of a good showing by the Congress. It is just that Madhya Pradesh’s political geography (or absence of linguistic identity) has been such that projection of a particular leader (unless someone is an incumbent chief minister) does not add up votes across the state. The Congress’ conscious decision not to project Scindia, Digvijaya or Kamal Nath actually holds good in the context of a peculiar nature of the state.

Politics has something for the dare-devil. In 1998 Raman Singh won and became a giant killer and since then there has been no looking back. Chouhan lost in November 2003 but today, his political stock is no less than that of Raman’s. Among other things, both owe their success to risk taking ability.

Show comments
Show comments

Top News

Most Read In 24 Hours