New Delhi: There’s a popular belief in Chhattisgarh: Whoever wins Bastar wins the state. It held true this time as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made its big comeback on the back of victories in 26 assembly seats across the two tribal-dominated divisions of Bastar and Surguja — the result of a carefully crafted strategy targeting tribal votes.
In 2018, it was the Congress that swept the Bastar region, bagging 11 out of 12 seats, but the BJP clinched eight this time. However, it was Surguja that saw the most dramatic reversal of fortunes, going from a clean sweep of all 14 seats by the Congress to a clean sweep by the BJP. And one of those seats now in the BJP’s kitty is Ambikapur, the bastion of Surguja’s titular maharaja, T.S. Singhdeo, who the Congress had made deputy chief minister just months before the assembly elections.
Chhattisgarh voted in two phases on 7 and 17 November, and the results announced Sunday saw the BJP storm back to power, winning 54 seats out of 90 and reducing the ruling Congress to just 35. With the tribal belts being crucial to this victory, the BJP’s central leadership will face more pressure as it contemplates a choice: to give the state its first tribal chief minister or to select one from the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). The party had banked on support from the latter and fielded 11 candidates from the Sahu community, a dominant section among the OBCs.
The BJP’s turnaround in the tribal belts wasn’t easy, and was made possible only by a careful strategy. This included fielding new faces as well as senior tribal leaders as candidates in these vital regions, continuous outreach that incorporated tribal symbolism, pushing central welfare schemes, using narratives around religious conversion and nationalism to polarise the tribal population, and exploiting the faultlines occasioned by the Congress choosing an OBC chief minister.
The party fielded 47 new faces in the elections, of whom 30 were elected. It also made sure to field prominent tribal leaders, including Union Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Renuka Singh in Bharatpur-Sonhat, former BJP state chief Vishnudeo Sai in Kunkuri, and former Rajya Sabha MP Rajya Sabha Ramvichar Netam in Ramanujganj, all of whom won.
Former state minister Lata Usendi — who defeated veteran Congress leader and minister Mohan Markam to win the Kondagaon seat — was also appointed a national vice president of the BJP just before the election. With current state chief Arun Sao being from the OBCs, this helped to balance things out and amplify the message that tribal leaders had a growing share in the party’s power structure.
Usendi says there was a sentiment among the tribal population that the Baghel government was working only for the OBCs. “Our approach was to make our welfare push in tribal seats and tell them how the BJP has made a tribal person the President of India, and that only bringing the BJP to power can ensure their welfare,” she tells ThePrint.
Another senior Chhattisgarh BJP leader says the BJP “ used every fault line of the Congress, like the OBC chief minister not paying attention to the tribal belts of Bastar and Surguja, and how he humiliated Singhdeo. We used the Sachin Pilot narrative in Rajasthan to win back the Gurjars, and we used the fight between Singhdeo and Baghel to exploit sentiments in Surguja as Singhdeo has credibility among the tribal people.”
Religious polarisation & nationalism
The BJP was successful in building up a narrative about the threat of religious conversion among the tribal population. Soon after its defeat in 2018, the party — together with the cadre of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which has an enormous presence in the tribal districts through the institution of the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram — began to raise the issue actively.
Narayanpur in the Bastar division emerged as a focal point for this drive, with the RSS’s tribal outfit organising programmes to win over those who had converted to Christianity. Numerous incidents of violence ensued among the divided tribal population in the region, including an attack on a church in January this year. When the Bhupesh Baghel government named several tribal people as accused in the resulting case, the BJP criticised the move.
This remained a festering sore, contributing to polarisation in the run-up to the elections. Now, BJP general secretary and former MLA Kedar Kashyap has won the Narayanpur assembly seat by more than 19,000 votes.
The party also made use of nationalist discourse to win the elections. For example, it fielded Ram Kumar Toppo, a former Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) commando who was awarded the President’s Medal for Gallantry in 2021, against state minister and tribal leader Amarjeet Bhagat in Sitapur — a constituency the latter had won continuously since 2003.
The BJP played on a controversial statement by Bhagat — about a soldier’s duty being to “protect the country at the borders and not to fight elections” — to accuse him of disrespecting nationalist sentiments, linking this to Congress leaders questioning the reality of the surgical strikes carried out against Pakistan in 2016 in retaliation for the Pulwama attack. Toppo went on to defeat Bhagat by over 17,000 votes.
Also read: How BJP overcame the Gehlot welfare model & its own infighting to triumph in Rajasthan
Focus on smaller parties in tough seats
Besides caste calculations, Home Minister Amit Shah and Rajya Sabha MP Om Mathur — as state in-charge, the brains behind the BJP’s micromanagement and filling of lacunae — developed distinct strategies for the tribal seats and the central plains, it is learnt.
In the plains, the party made a welfare push. Seeking farmers’ votes, it countered the Congress’s paddy bonuses with its own procurement promises. In its manifesto, launched in early November, it promised an annual cash transfer of Rs 12,000 for married women, and asked every functionary to get forms filled out — focussing on tribal women — so that financial aid could be distributed, creating a buzz in poor districts.
The Congress reacted only after Deepavali, promising a higher Rs 15,000 annual financial aid, but the BJP’s machinery had tapped the moment.
Another Strategy of dividing votes played well in tough seats in Surguja, where a few tribal parties have a base. According to sources, Shah at an internal BJP meeting in October had asked party men to help smaller parties, ensuring that they would divide votes.
In Ambikapur, for example, the BJP’s Rajesh Agrawal defeated Singhdeo by just 94 votes. Meanwhile, the Gondvana Gantantra Party’s candidate was able to secure 6,083 votes, and other smaller parties were also able to win votes that could have made up the difference, such as the Hamar Raj Party with 719 votes.
Welfare push and identity politics
A senior Chattisgargh BJP leader says, “Whether it was the election of the first tribal President, or tribal ministers in the cabinet, or the prime minister celebrating and visiting (tribal icon) Birsa Munda’s birthplace, The BJP used that narrative to convince tribals that it respects them and has left no stone unturned for their welfare.”
He adds: “The prime minister launched a Rs 24,000 crore plan for vulnerable tribal groups in the last days of campaigning only 200 km away from Chattisgarh to send a message to the tribal constituency. And while Baghel kept harping on the Chhattisgarhiya identity, we askedm what about the Surguja identity or the Bastar identity, to use the faultline of tribal versus non-tribal identity politics.”
A BJP MLA from the Bastar region says, “From day one after Om Mathur arrived as state in-charge, there was a new aggression in the party to win back tribals. He asked us to visit the homes of beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana and felicitate them. Similarly, beneficiaries of Garib Kalyan and other schemes were shortlisted to be honour at one function or the other. When the party promised the Mahtari scheme (the financial aid for women), camps were organised to fill out forms for women. These welfare schemes and regular outreach made a huge difference in winning back tribals.”
According to former BJP state chief Vishnudeo Sai, the state unit also realised that the discourse around a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) could create confusion among the tribal population of Chhattisgarh.
“Feedback was sent to the party’s central unit about its repercussions and the party did not push it. This helped to avoid confusion and maintain harmony among tribals.”
Also read: 4 reasons Bhupesh Baghel lost Chhattisgarh. His Hinduism outreach isn’t one of them