Chhattisgarh’s former Chief Minister Ajit Jogi lambasted his party unit as a “divided house” and completely undid the efforts of Congress president Sonia Gandhi when she braved the Maoist-infested Bastar region this morning (Nov. 7) and sought to put the Raman Singh Government in the dock. Politically, the 12 Assembly seats in Bastar are regarded as the key to Government formation in the State; Congress currently holds only one, that of Kawasi Lakhma (Konta), a protégé of Ajit Jogi.
The State unit has been badly divided since the May 25, 2013 Maoist ambush at Darbha Ghati, Dantewada, wiped out almost the entire leadership that was returning from a huge rally. Jogi escaped as he was given a helicopter of account of his physical disability, and Lakhma was mysteriously spared by the Maoists though they had brutally murdered Salwa Judum founder Mahendra Karma, state unit chief Nand Kumar Patel and his son, and many others; former Union Minister Vidya Charan Shukla succumbed to his injuries later.
The incident brought both Jogi and Lakhma under a cloud. It badly rattled the BJP regime, but Chief Minister Raman Singh controlled the damage by humbly accepting responsibility for any security lapse, and attending the funerals of the deceased, besides visiting their families.
Although Congress officially held the BJP Government responsible for the deaths, suspicion within the party fell elsewhere and the high command was forced to downsize Jogi, which led him to lash out in turn. Appearing on television, Ajit Jogi asserted that Congress had “lost all advantage” from the sympathy wave that followed the May assassinations because it was badly divided, a euphemism for saying he should have been projected as Chief Ministerial candidate.
Unaware that she was being sabotaged by Jogi (a Christian whom she once imposed as first Chief Minister of the new State despite the majority of MLAs supporting Vidya Charan Shukla), Sonia Gandhi valiantly strove to pick holes in Raman Singh’s record. Despite opinion polls predicting a greater margin of victory for the BJP, she aimed to increase the 2008 Congress tally of 38 seats and 38.63 per cent vote share.
Speaking at Kondagaon in north Bastar, Sonia Gandhi lauded the UPA schemes such as the Forest Act, Food Security, and promised a number of sops including minimum support price (MSP) on forest produce (as in the case of food grains) to benefit the tribals. Lamenting the deaths of her party colleagues in the Naxal violence, she said the UPA steadfastly supported Chief Minister Raman Singh in the fight against the Maoists, but made a muted criticism of his regime’s failure to control law and order and even build proper roads in the district. The BJP, she said, “only talk big things, whereas Congress shows the work it does”. But she could not escalate the attack without inviting greater scrutiny of the suspected role played by a section of the party in the massacre.
Congress, she said, wishes development taking the weaker sections along, and regretted the continued out-migration in states like Chhattisgarh in spite of schemes like MNREGA. She blamed the BJP Government, claiming that while poverty had declined in other States, it had increased in Chhattisgarh on account of BJP “misrule” over the past decade.
Unfortunately for Sonia Gandhi, despite a combative performance, she was upstaged by Ajit Jogi even as the Narendra Modi juggernaut moved from strength to strength, from Jagdalpur and Kanker in Bastar to Dongargarh in Rajnandgaon. In sharp contrast to the Congress, the BJP throughout presented the picture of a united and fighting force, without a single jarring note.
Speaking at Jagdalpur shortly after Sonia Gandhi’s speech in Kondagaon, Narendra Modi deftly twisted the narrative towards the massive terrorist attack planned at BJP’s Hunkar Rally in Patna on October 27, in which six persons died and a major part of its central and state leadership was targetted. Whereas Raman Singh had immediately cut short his own yatra and returned to the capital on hearing of the attack, humbly accepted responsibility and visited the families of the deceased, the Bihar Chief Minister neither showed remorse nor shame nor accepted any responsibility for what happened. In one subtle stroke, Modi put the UPA and the Congress leadership in the dock for not expressing any regret at the Patna attack, and for its proximity to Nitish Kumar.
An amazing aspect of this writer’s whimsical decision to follow Sonia Gandhi in Bastar today was the discovery that, despite having ruled independent India for the better part of 66 years and having vast experience in conducting election campaigns and managing the publicity of its leaders, the Congress is curiously deficient in using technology to maximize outreach. Its website gives no information about the campaign programmes of its star campaigners, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. Nor is there any attempt to transmit their speeches live via the internet to offset low coverage from television channels that are dictated by TRPs and tend to follow Narendra Modi.
Despite full attention from the mainstream media, the Gujarat Chief Minister ensures internet coverage of all his public appearances via his personal website; these are also picked up by YouTube and other interactive websites. It is pertinent that the fledgling Aam Admi Party has also made good use of YouTube to popularize itself; yet Congress is lagging in the use of free technological tools to expand its footprint.
The use of social media by party spokespersons is bizarre. When this writer was trying to find out the time of Sonia Gandhi’s speech in Bastar and got zero information from the party website, someone suggested following some vocal spokespersons on Twitter, in the hope that they might tweet the highlights of her speech the way Narendra Modi’s staff tweets the main points of his speeches.
Yet neither Priyanka Chaturvedi (@priyankac19) nor Sanjay Jha (@JhaSanjay) seemed interested in Sonia Gandhi’s lonely battle in Bastar, where three IEDs (70 kg of explosive) were found in routine sweeps ahead of the heavy duty rallies by Sonia Gandhi and Narendra Modi. Neither Jha nor Chaturvedi responded to repeated requests for Sonia Gandhi’s speech (which being a written text, could easily have been provided in real time). On the contrary, Chaturvedi spent the morning following Narendra Modi and making snide remarks about the supposed low attendance at his rallies. It was a very surreal experience.
Niticentral.com, 8 November 2013
http://www.niticentral.com/2013/11/08/congress-spokespersons-track-modi-not-sonia-155466.html