On May 22, a small number of tribal people assembled under the scorching sun in the sleepy town of Geedam in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district for a protest meeting. Their agenda: demand the representation of tribals in the state government and its departments.
"The Chhattisgarh government (led by the BJP) is running on outsourced thinking by outsiders," fumed Sohan Potai, addressing the gathering. Potai has been the BJP's tribal face in the state and is a four-time member of Parliament. He alleged that Chief Minister Raman Singh and four members in his Cabinet were "outsourced" and they, in turn, had appointed "outsourced" officials. There would be no development in Chhattisgarh until people elected a local as their leader, he said.
With the demand for tribal leadership in the Chhattisgarh government gaining ground and polls in the state slated for November 2018, significant political manoeuvres are likely. About a decade ago, tribal leaders from the BJP held a secret meeting and drew up a strategy to put pressure on the party but its high command quashed the move and issued a warning to them.
This time, party leaders are playing down the issue. "The government under the leadership of Raman Singh has been doing well for 13 years now," said state BJP President Dharamlal Kaushik. The issue of tribal leadership was not being considered at present, he said. "Leaders should raise sensitive issues only at party fora."
The BJP leadership cannot overlook the matter of representation of castes according to their proportion in the population. In the 13-member state Cabinet, five ministers, including the chief minister, are from the upper castes and business communities. Compare this with the population of the state: 52 per cent belongs to Other Backward Classes (OBC) and 32 per cent to Scheduled Tribes (ST); general castes make up just seven per cent.
In the state Cabinet, there are three members each from the OBCs and STs and two belonging to Scheduled Castes (SC). The all-important portfolios have been allotted to ministers from non-tribal and non-OBC castes.
Tribal resentment towards the BJP is gradually coming out into the open and the impact is evident from past electoral results. In the 2013 state polls, the BJP was stung by a dismal show in the tribal regions, although it did return to power. Prominent BJP tribal ministers, including Nankiram Kanwar, Ramvichar Netam and Lata Usendi, and several MLAs contesting the polls from tribal areas were defeated.
In the 1980 state polls after the BJP had come into being, it won seven seats in the Chhattisgarh region, which was then part of undivided Madhya Pradesh. Of the seven seats, four were from the tribal belts. In the 2003 Assembly elections, the BJP bagged 50 seats of which 26 were reserved for ST candidates. In the next election, however, the number of tribal seats won by the BJP reduced to 20.
In the 2013 Assembly polls, the number plummeted to 11, resulting in upheavals in the BJP, the ruling party then. It started an exercise to address the issue. The selection of candidates for the Rajya Sabha is testimony to the drill.
Nandkumar Sai, another tribal leader in the BJP, has been vocal on the issue of tribal leadership. As a Rajya Sabha member he had earlier launched a scathing attack on Singh. The BJP decided to drop Sai for the seat, but could not take the risk of giving the seat to a non-tribal.
The BJP decided to field Netam, a former home minister of the state, as its candidate in the Upper House. According to a party insider, the BJP high command had made up its mind to go with a tribal candidate even as the Congress bet on Chhaya Verma, an OBC nominee.
While securing "safe" states for the election of the five ministers in the Narendra Modi government whose tenure in the Rajya Sabha was ending, Chhattisgarh was omitted by the BJP. The party has one Rajya Sabha seat in Chhattisgarh where its candidate had a winning chance. The party did not take the state into consideration even while trying to secure Rajya Sabha seats for Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu, his deputy Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal and Union Rural Development Minister Chaudhary Birendra Singh. They were all nominated from other states. The party did not take the risk of fielding a non-tribal, either.
What is undeniable is that the BJP cannot ignore how the tribal card scripted its win in the Assam Assembly polls recently. Sarbananda Sonowal, who belongs to the Kachari tribe, has given the BJP a foothold in the Northeast.
How will Chhattisgarh treat the BJP? Come 2018 and the answer would be known.
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
