 "Ajit Jogi turns a rebel in Chhattisgarh")
The weather in the industrial town of Korba in Chhattisgarh on August 18 is sluggish and there is an air of tiredness around. But the atmosphere in the newsroom of a well-rated local television news channel is electric.
Assigning duties to the reporters, the editor says, “You should not miss a single sentence of his speech. God knows what will come out of his mouth.” If required, carry the bigger camera, the editor instructs the technicians.
This behind-the-scene effort is because Ajit Jogi is in town. The senior Congress leader and the first chief minister of Chhattisgarh will address a gathering in Korba. For the past month or so, the wily politician has been keeping the press and politics in the state on tenterhooks.
Jogi is on the move, literally, on what he himself defines as the “Jogi Express”. He says with ill-concealed glee: “The Jogi Express has begun its run and those who are willing can board it. It will be the only express train that will chug off in the state and those who fail to get on it will repent later.” Assembly elections are slated for later in the year and Jogi has pressed the accelerator.
Despite the swagger, the seasoned politician and an IAS official of the 1971 batch, however, is very calculated when it comes to words. He never says anything that reveals his plans. But he issues cryptic statements that are being variously interpreted. And that seems to be the objective. “This is my way of speaking -- delivering a message that sounds like a signal,” he says rather smugly.
It is up to his state party leaders to read between the lines. The Congress, in the opposition in the Chhattisgarh for the past decade, is keeping a close eye on Jogi’s action. As is the media, for whom a Jogi rally often comes with windfall headlines.
For instance, at some gatherings, he has even named candidates for the assembly election, clearly cocking a snook at the Congress, which itself hasn’t declared anything yet.
Having been sidelined from the mainstream affairs of the Chhattisgarh Congress over the last few years, Jogi now seems to be in no mood to compromise. He is committed to end the Congress-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) binary in the state by forming a third front. No wonder you feel a crackling tension in the Congress ranks.
The apparent reason for Jogi’s tour across the length and breadth of the state is to commemorate the birth anniversary of Mini Mata, the first woman member of Parliament from the undivided Madhya Pradesh and regarded as ‘Guru Mata’ of the Satnami community.
In reality, it is a show of strength initiated by the Christian politician. And indications in the party show that he has been successful in his endeavour.
Ironically, Mini Mata’s grandson and Congress MLA, Rudra Guru, has been ignored during the entire road show. The legislator rushed to New Delhi recently and lodged a complaint with the party high command, stating that Jogi’s activities have been damaging the party’s prospects.
“I am the grandson of Mini Mata, but I am not even invited to the programmes, while Jogi is projecting someone else in my assembly constituency,” fumes Guru.
While the political manoeuvring in Chhattisgarh Congress is in full throttle, the party MLAs are in a fix about whether to attend Jogi’s shows. Jogi is gradually gaining the image of a rebel, and being noticed in his company has its implications.
But he also seems to be the man of the moment, the only Congress leader who is able to connect with people after the deaths of state Congress president Nand Kumar Patel and leaders like V C Shukla and Mahendra Karma following the attack by Maoists on a Congress cavalcade in Bastar on May 25.
Ajit Pramod Kumar Jogi has never learned to be a No 2 -- neither in his career nor in politics. And because there are ample indications that he no longer enjoys the status of No 1 in the Chhattisgarh Congress, he finds himself with little option but to explore another.
Having come from a deprived family, he passed out from the engineering college with a gold medal and rose to become a bureaucrat. All along, he seemed almost to have a bizarre neurosis against capitulating to anything, no matter what the challenge.
When Chhattisgarh was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in November 2000, Jogi became the leader of the Congress Legislature Party despite not having the support of a single legislator and was sworn in as the new state’s first chief minister.
In December 2001, he engineered a split in the opposition BJP and walked away with 12 MLAs to consolidate his position in the legislature party. Two years after this, when BJP trounced the Congress to secure an absolute majority in the polls, Jogi lost his numero uno status.
He came under the scanner when a BJP leader displayed bundles of notes stating that Jogi had bribed him to split BJP again. The Congress leader was, however, acquitted of the charges later. The incident culminated in his suspension from the Congress.
“After his suspension, there was talk that Jogi would vanish from the political scene,” says one of his trusted aides. But he hit back in a big way and regained his position in the party by defeating former union minister V C Shukla in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections from Mahasamund.
Jogi’s bravado in taking on Shukla, who had then joined BJP, was part of a long-drawn strategy. “Jogi approached (Congress President) Sonia Gandhi and said he was willing to contest against and defeat Shukla,” recalls a senior Congress leader. Sonia was convinced and his suspension was revoked.
Jogi felled Shukla but paid a heavy price for it. During campaigning, he met with a road accident in which a whiplash injury to his spine paralysed all his four limbs. He has been wheel-chair-bound for the last nine years.
But this has not deterred him from active engagement in politics. He goes on more tours than any other Congress leader in the state. Neither have controversies derailed him, whether it be the kerfuffle over his tribal status or his alleged involvement, and of his son, in politics of the underhand type.
Jogi’s weakness is that he has ever been an adamant one-man show. “When Jogi was at the helm of affairs, he never talked of anyone other than Sonia Gandhi,” recalls another senior Congress functionary. This closeness to 10 Janpath created bitterness in the party’s second-line leadership, which is now playing out.
Politics, apart from being the art of the possible, also exemplifies how things come a full circle. Today, when Sonia is reported to be keeping herself away from the day-to-day affairs of the party in Chhattisgarh, Jogi is at the receiving end with no mentor to protect him.
He had hoped for a plum position for himself in the state after the Maoist decimation of the incumbent leadership. But no one in Delhi bought his arguments and Charan Das Mahant was posted as the president of the state unit. Jogi, therefore, stands isolated in the party.
Predictably, his campaign is now against his own partymen. The barbs in his speeches are directed more at his party leaders and colleagues in the state than BJP, which has been ruling the state for the last two terms.
Political watchers, however, says that despite his solitude, Jogi is in an advantageous position for bargaining when the nitty-gritty of elections begins. A senior communist leader, Manish Kunjam, became the first to openly voice the speculations that Jogi might well be in the process of forming a party that will lead the now shattered third front in the state.
“If a third front manages a few seats, it will be in a decisive position because Chhattisgarh is a small state with just 90 members in the assembly,” says an observer.
Should a situation arise when neither Congress nor BJP win a majority – and this is a probable given BJP’s incumbency and the Congress’ disarray – Jogi, and his potential third front, will play a vital role in government formation. In such a scenario, Jogi may not make a compromise with the No 1 position.
It is not as if Congress is not unaware of the former chief minister’s strengths and capabilities. It is possibly the reason why the party seniors are playing down Jogi’s virtual rebellion.
The Congress general secretary in charge of Chhattisgarh, B K Hari Prasad, says acquiescently that Jogi is touring the state and working to “strengthen the Congress”. It’s true -- Congress may love or hate Jogi, but it just cannot ignore him.