JOgI paSSES batON tO SON, NOt tO cONtESt thIS tImE
He wants to make himself available for campaigning of the alliance candidates.
The announcement of former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister and president of Janata Congress of Chhattisgarh ( JCC) Ajit Jogi not to contest next month’s Assembly elections is being seen as the final step towards passing his political baton on to his son Amit and daughter-in-law Richa.
His wife Renu, who is the Congress MLA from Kota in Bilaspur, is also unlikely to contest the elections this time, indicating both the senior Jogis would prefer to allow their next generation to flourish in Chhattisgarh politics.
Kota is the neighbouring constituency of Jogi’s tradi- tional Marwahi seat, which is being represented by Amit now. Renu had entered politics after quitting her government service as head of the ENT Department in Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital in Raipur.
While Amit will be contesting on a JCC ticket, wife Richa will be a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate. Ajit Jogi has entered into an electoral alliance with BSP led by Mayawati, who was being wooed by the Congress too.
Speaking to The Sunday Guardian, Amit said, “Ajit Jogi is the president of the party and CM nominee of the alliance. He will be needed in all the 90 constituencies as the candidates of the alliance have already booked his campaign dates all over the state. So it would not be possible for him to contest election at the same time.”
“Amit has been learning under his father’s shadow since 2000 when his father became the CM. He has been an MLA for a term now and has more than enough political experience under his belt. He is the one who handles the nitty-gritties of the party affairs while Jogiji manages bigger issues. However, it will be the senior Jogi who will be the CM if we are able to form government as he has more acceptability among the voters. But the generational change has been put into effect,” a source close to the family said.
Earlier, while speaking to this newspaper in July, Ajit Jogi had stated that he would be contesting from the Rajnandgaon seat from where Chief Minister Raman Singh is the sitting MLA. However, sources close to the leader said that after the tie-up with BSP and CPI, the party leadership felt that it would not be prudent to restrict him to only one constituency.
“If he would have contested against the CM from Rajnandgaon, the party and he himself would have been forced to focus only on his seat. With that limitation gone, he will now be campaigning extensively throughout the state and focus on all the 90 Assembly seats,” the sources added.
The party is expecting to garner a vote share of close to 15% to 25% and emerge as the largest party in the triangular fight which includes the ruling BJP and the Congress.
“We have a realistic expectation and we know where we can win and where we cannot. In the last few elections, BSP has managed to get 5% vote. This time, with Jogi and Mayawati coming together, the votes of tribals and Dalits, who constitute more than 30% and 13% of the total population respectively, will help us in performing well in a large number of seats. That apart, the businessmen and middle class too fondly remember the CM tenure of Jogi when the bureaucrats were kept under control and corruption at the top level was minimal,” a party leader claimed.
The JCC has announced 46 candidates out of the 55 seats it will contest, Amit said. The BSP is contesting on 33 seats, while CPI will contest the remaining two seats of Sukma and Dantewada in the Maoists-infested Bastar region having 12 seats. The formation of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh on 21 October 1951 as an ideological and political alternative to Nehruvian Congress was a watershed in the political history of independent India. The role played by Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerji and his close associate, Prof Bal Raj Madhok in its formation is worth remembering at a time when the country is facing multiple challenges. It is important to know how the two luminaries and intellectual giants met and collaborated for the formation of Bharatiya Jana Sangh to give a viable alternative to the Gandhi-Nehru Congress, which had betrayed the faith of all nationalist Hindus by secretly conceding to a Partition based on the two-nation theory to placate the Muslim League and the British. As the Industry Minister in the Nehru Cabinet of free India, Dr Mookerji resigned to protest against the Nehru-Liaquat Pact signed in April 1950, barring India from taking any interest in the plight of the Hindu minority facing genocide in East Pakistan. He stood for the rights of Hindus of East Bengal and felt the need of a new political platform to reflect his political philosophy.
Prof Bal Raj Madhok, on the other hand, was actively involved in Jammu and Kashmir. As a professor of history in DAV College, Srinagar, and a trusted confidant of Mahraja Hari Singh, he prepared the ground for the accession of J&K state to India and played a notable role in the defence of Srinagar at the time of the Pakistani invasion in October 1947.
He entered active politics in the same year as the founder secretary of the Jammu and Kashmir Praja Parishad to voice the concerns of Hindus and Buddhists in the state. In March 1948, he met Home Minister Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to apprise them of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir and the anti-India activities of Sheikh Abdullah.
By this time, Prof Madhok’s first book, India on the Crossroads, was already published in Lahore in 1946. It was based on an essay by the same title that had won him the first prize from the Provincial Liberal Federation in 1945. The essay, written on the eve of Partition, dealt with the Hindu-Muslim problem, which, according to Prof Madhok, was the outcome of “incomplete Indianisation of Indian Islam and weakness of the nationalist forces as against the reactionary”. His call for “Indianisation of Indian Muslims” brought him wide recognition as a nationalist thinker and writer. It also won him the esteemed trust and friendship of Dr Mookerji. Together they actively collaborated for the formation of Bharatiya Jana Sangh with which Prof Madhok remained associated throughout his life. At the behest of Dr Mookerji, Prof Madhok drafted the manifesto of Bharatiya Jana Sangh with Indianisation as its core value.
Jana Sangh laid special stress on Indianisation of all such elements as had strayed away from the national mainstream. Dr Mookerji himself moved a resolution in the first plenary session of Jana Sangh held at Kanpur in December 1952, which, by implication, accepted the concept of India being a Hindu country. The resolution nailed all the misleading claims that Jana Sangh was never committed to Hindu Rashtra.
Bharatiya Jana Sangh grew from below. First, its units for Punjab, Pepsu, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi were formed in May 1951, with Prof Madhok as its first general secretary. Similarly, provincial party units were formed during the next three months in West Bengal, UP, Rajasthan and Madhya Bharat. An all India convention convened by Prof Madhok was held in New Delhi on 21 October 1951, in which representatives of these provincial units, together with some representative citizens from other states, participated. It was formally launched as an all India political party with Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerji as its first national president and Prof Madhok as its general secretary. The presidential speech of Dr Mookerji, its constitution and manifesto are the basic documents of Bharatiya Jana Sangh.
Jana Sangh laid stress on nationalism rooted in Indian Hindu culture and tolerance for all forms of worship. It considered secularism as projected by Nehru Congress as euphemism for communalism and continuation of policies which had resulted in the Partition of the motherland in 1947.
In the economic field, it stood for decentralisation of economic power with special emphasis on agriculture, self-employed, labour intensive and small scale industry and competition. It aimed at “jan kalian” or welfare of the common man and minimum dependence on state. In foreign affairs and defence, it stood for reciprocal policy towards Pakistan, closer ties with Hindu-Buddhist countries and full diplomatic ties with Israel. Regarding J&K, it stood by Praja Parishad for its full integration with the rest of India through revocation of special status, abrogation of Article 370, promulgation of the Indian Constitution on the state and its reorganisation.
In the first general elections of 1952, it won three out of eight seats and polled 3% of the total votes to emerge as a national party. The demise of Dr Mookerji on 23 June 1953 in Srinagar shook Jana Sangh. But Prof Madhok, as its co-founder and senior-most leader, held Jana Sangh steadfast to its ideological moorings. Jana Sangh reached its highest water mark under his national presidentship in 1967, when it entered into a political arrangement with Swatantra Party and Akali Dal and won 35 seats in the Lok Sabha, while Swatantra Party got 45 seats. Along with 20 independents and others elected with their support, it formed a bloc of ideologically united 100 MPs in Lok Sabha. It also performed well in the state Assemblies of UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir. It secured an absolute majority in the Delhi Metropolitan Council and registered its presence in Gujarat and won a seat in West Bengal. Jana Sangh was now ready to take off. This was no mean feat. Prof Madhok could achieve this as he never compromised with its basic ideology as a truly nationalistic alternative to the Congress, the communists and the communalists. Like Dr Mookerji, he remained rooted in Jana Sangh, its ideology and the saffron flag throughout his life, till his last breath.