Chhindwara: Sarita Saranpur, 41, sits on a plush chair in the brightly-lit lobby of the swanky glass building that houses the office of Startek call centre, some 10 km from Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara city. Behind her, two men are putting up a whiteboard with a map detailing the company’s global network — from the United States and Canada in North America to India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and the Philippines in the Asia Pacific.
Sarita, the shy mother of one, has been employed at Startek since 2014 and spends most of her day fielding calls from customers of the Indian telecommunications major, Bharti Airtel Ltd.
Dressed in a demure cotton salwar kameez with floral designs, she tells ThePrint, “The commute to work was easy and the work environment and the salary are conducive.”
Startek, the call centre where Sarita works, has offices in 17 locations across India and employs as many as 20,000 people. One of those locations is Chhindwara, a tier-3 city with a population of 190,008, according to the 2011 Census.
According to Anurag Harold, who manages Startek in Chhindwara, it was through the efforts of Congress leader and former chief minister Kamal Nath that the call centre first began operations in the district in 2012, when he was still union minister.
Chhindwara, Kamal Nath’s bastion for over four decades — is all set to vote in the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections on 19 April, and it’s not the former Union minister but his son and sitting MP Nakul who’s contesting from the seat against BJP’s Vivek Bunty Sahu.
But as far as most voters — including Sarita — are concerned, their vote is still reserved for Kamal Nath, who also served as president of the state Congress unit from 2018 till 2023.
“BJP government is giving Rs 1,250 to women in the state today (under the chief minister’s Ladli Behna scheme). But this job has given my family stability for the last 10 years. The work Kamal Nath ji has done for us, and for Chhindwara, stands apart,” she says.
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Introducing pilot schemes, skill development centres
It was in 1980 that Kamal Nath fought his first Lok Sabha election from Chhindwara, which was, even then, a Congress stronghold. Introducing him during that election, then prime minister Indira Gandhi famously told voters: “He is my third son, please take care of him.”
Chhindwara has since gained a reputation of being Nath’s bastion, with the former union minister representing the constituency in every successive Lok Sabha except three — in 1996, when his wife Alka was elected from this seat, 1997, when BJP stalwart Sundar Lal Patwa beat him, and in 2019, when son Nakul won the seat for the Congress.
After the UPA came to power in 2004, Nath held various important portfolios, assuming the role of Union minister of commerce and industry from 2004 to 2009, then serving as the minister of road transport and highway (2009-11), minister for urban affairs (2011-14) and later minister of parliamentary affairs (2012-14).
In 2012, as the union minister for parliamentary affairs, he emerged as the UPA’s troubleshooter, playing a key role in helping the UPA win a crucial debate that allowed them to bring Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into multi-brand retail.
During these years, Chhindwara was transformed from a quiet and unassuming town to a hub of industries with an extensive road and rail network and a model railway station that provided critical connectivity to Delhi and Bhopal.
According to a senior Congress leader who didn’t wish to be named, the town owes much of this to Nath. “With UPA in power, Nath deployed two people at the Centre who worked to ensure all pilot government schemes were first implemented in Chhindwara,” he says.
Nath also helped set up various skill development centres such as the Footwear Design and Development Institute (FDDI), the Apparel Training and Design Centre (ATDC), and IL&FS Skill Development Corporation to run vocational training programmes.
These centres also collaborate with IT giants such as TCS, HCL, and Infosys to help youngsters prepare for campus placements, says Manoj Soni, the person in charge of the Sony Training Institute in Chhindwara.
According to Shivgopal, who manages a training centre at the local office of the industry body Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), these initiatives helped not only Chhindwara, with its 36.82 percent scheduled tribe population (according to the 2011 Census), but also the adjoining tribal districts of Balaghat, Seoni, Mandla, and Dindori. Several tribal students come to Chhindwara for skill development training, he says.
Harold at Startek adds that many such young men and women preparing for competitive examinations travel from as far away as 50 km to Chhindwara.
‘Helped build the district’
In the 2019 general election, the BJP swept Madhya Pradesh winning 28 of the state’s 29 parliamentary seats. However, Chhindwara remained firmly with the Congress, with Nath’s son Nakul winning the seat against BJP’s tribal face Nathansaha Kawreti by a margin of 37,536 votes.
In the 2019 bypolls, too, Kamal Nath won the Chhindwara assembly seat beating BJP’s Vivek Sahu by 24,612 votes.
Meanwhile, turmoil continued to roil the Congress. In 2020, the Congress government formed in Madhya Pradesh under Nath’s leadership was felled by a rebellion led by now-Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia. In December 2023, the Congress failed to dislodge the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) despite a wave of anti-incumbency, leading to a slew of defections to the BJP and Nath’s eventual resignation as state party president. Chief among those who exited the party was Nath loyalist and former Chhindwara MLA Deepak Saxena, who vacated the assembly seat in 2019 to make way for his election.
There were also talks that Nath himself, faced with growing unrest within the state Congress unit, would switch to the BJP, although he eventually dismissed these as rumours.
Despite these setbacks, however, support for Nath on the ground remains strong, with some even viewing defections from the party as a betrayal.
Rajgere Goswami, a 64-year-old furniture shop owner from Chhindwara, believes the constituency owes much to Nath. “Jo raja hai usko raja bolenge, jo praja hai wo praja hai (we’ll call the king a king and a commoner, a commoner),” he tells ThePrint.
“Shivraj (former chief minister Shivraj Chouhan) was the chief minister for 20 years, but there was no development around Chhindwara. Kamal Nath came here when there were no roads and built up this district through his efforts,” Goswami adds.
BJP leaders, too, have words of praise for Nath. At the city’s Old Power House area, BJP leader Alok Sharma points to a statue of prominent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader Pratul Chandra Dwivedi saying it was Nath who got it installed in the 1980s. Dwivedi unsuccessfully fought the 1980 election from Chhindwara as a Janata Party candidate.
“Kamal Nath ji was fond of Pratul Chandra Dwivedi and when Dwivedi ji fell ill, it was Kamal Nath who got him treated. After Dwivedi’s demise, when people demanded a statue, he (Nath) rose above political rivalry to get it installed,” says Sharma.
Like others, Sharma, too credits Nath with much of the constituency’s development. But he also accuses the former chief minister of using his clout and money to ‘manipulate’ tribals in the district. “Now, having put forward his son Nakul Nath, he gave way to dynasty politics,” he says, adding that BJP’s candidate Vivek Sahu will win the election.
Is Congress’s waning popularity affecting Kamal Nath?
In Chhindwara, BJP’s Vivek Sahu is leaving no stone unturned to wrest the Kamal Nath bastion, holding rallies and door-to-door campaigns to seek votes.
The chief of the BJP’s Chhindwara unit, Sahu started his career as state president of the party’s youth wing, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), in 2011.
This is the third time Sahu is going head-to-head against the Nath family, having unsuccessfully taken on the former chief minister twice before — in the 2019 Chhindwara assembly bypolls and the 2023 Madhya Pradesh assembly elections.
At Khapa Mithi village on the outskirts of Chhindwara city, Sahu stops his car to greet women. After he leaves, one of these women, Preeti Usreke, tells ThePrint she will be voting for the BJP, saying that Modi “has constructed Ram Mandir”.
She adds: “Why should we lie, it’s true Kamal Nath has done a lot for us. A member of my family got a job in Dubai.”
She isn’t the only one. Another villager who doesn’t want to be identified too says her vote is for the BJP this time. “What is the point of voting for the Congress when the BJP is at the Centre? Why go against the flow?” she asks.
Two houses away, BJP worker Mohan Babarkar seems to view these statements warily. “We always feel people will vote for the BJP here. They even come and swear that they would, but when the results are declared, we lose by 30-odd votes,” he says.
He, however, adds that something “feels different this time”.
At Chhindwara, 63-year-old Chandlala Chandak agrees. Nath is losing his support base because of a weakening Congress, he says.
“If Congress is a tree, Kamal Nath is a branch in a tree. There’s no doubt he has done much for the constituency but when the tree has weakened, how far will the branch go?”
Despite these odd opinions, Nath continues to wield significant sway in the area.
In Sarna village, where the former chief minister held a roadshow last week, Shaikh Kareem, who runs a general store, is critical of how Nath handled defections in the party earlier this year. But Kareem believes this “will have no impact on voting”.
“Those who vote for the Congress will continue to do so,” he says.
A state Congress leader who did not wish to be named tells ThePrint that while the BJP may have support in urban areas, the constituency’s rural pockets continue to back Nath.
These sentiments can be seen on the ground every now and then. In village Chawalpani, where tribals account for a sizable share of the population, Amit Sarate talks about acute water shortage, saying repeated complaints to Kamal Nath, the local MLA, have yielded little results. But ask him whom he would vote for and Sarate’s response is quick.
“These votes are not just about the development of our village but that of the entire district. There has been tremendous development across the district and we will vote only for him (Kamal Nath),” he says. His uncle Shukhram Vishwakarma chimes in: “Yeh purana aadmi hain aur sayana bhi hain (he’s our old guy, and he’s a sensible guy).”
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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