Can Chhattisgarh turn out to bea game changer for Cong?

Party has not been able to wrest power in state for close to 15 years but closed gap in seat share, vote share in assembly polls

NEW DELHI: Ch hat tis gar his among the five states which go to polls at the end of this year.

The main contest will be between the Bharatiya Janata Party( B JP ), which has been ruling the state since 2003, and the Congress, the main opposition party.

Although the BJP swept the state in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, winning 10 of 11 seats, assembly elections have been much closer contests. BJP’s seat share in the Chhattisgarh assembly was consistent around 55% in the 2003, 2008 and 2013 assembly elections. Although Congress has not been able to wrest power from BJP, it has closed the gap both in terms of seat share and vote share in successive assembly polls.

Chart 1: Vote share and seat share of Congress and BJP since 2003.

An HT analysis shows that alienation among Scheduled Tribes (ST) voters vis-à-vis BJP could be behind the gradual revival of Congress fortune sin the state. However, the process of ST consolidation behind Congress also seems to have triggered a counter-mobilisation of non-ST voters behind B JP that might have been helping it get re-elected.

After the delimitation exercise in 2008, Chhattisgarh assembly has 29 ST-reserved assembly constituencies (ACs). The BJP won 19 and 11 of these seats in the 2008 and 2013 elections, while the Congress won 10 and 18 out of these seats. There were 34 ST-reserved ACs in the 2003 assembly, of which the BJP and the Congress won 25 and nine seats. A similar trend is seen in the vote share figures of the two parties as well.

Chart 2: Seat share and vote share of Congress and BJP in ST-reserved seats.

Constituencies with the highest share of ST population are reserved for ST candidates. The number of A Cs to be so reserved is determined during the delimitation exercise by dividing the total

ANALYSIS SHOWS THAT ALIENATION AMONG ST VOTERS VISÀVIS BJP COULD BE BEHIND GRADUAL REVIVAL OF CONGRESS FORTUNES

number of AC sin proportion to the share of ST population in the state. Since the share of ST population is an important factor in deciding which constituencies are to be reserved, an improvement in performanceon ST-reserved A Cs suggests that the Congress has been gaining ground in areas with more ST voters.

To double-check these findings, we classified all ACs in Chhattisgarh into three categories: ACs with ST population greater than 50%, ACs with ST population less than 50% and A Cs with ST population less than 25%. Of the 90 AC sin the state, 63 have less than 50% ST population and 48 of these have less than 25% ST population.

This analysis has been done only for the 2008 and 2013 elections, as 2003 ACs are not comparable with the ones in 2008 and 2013 due to there drawing of AC boundaries in the 2008 delimitation exercise. The AC-wise ST population share data has been taken from the Election Commission of India.

In ACs with a greater than 50% share of STs, the BJP had a lead of 2.3 percentage points over the Congress in the 2008 elections in terms of vote share. In the 2013 elections, the Congress ended up with a lead of 4.3 percentage points over the BJP in these ACs. In terms of the number of seats won, the break-up changed from 17-10 in favour of the BJP in 2008 to 18-9 in favour of the Congress.

On the other hand, in ACs where STs had a population share of less than 50%, the BJP led over the Congress in 2008 by 1.5 percentage points in terms of vote share. This increased to 2.7 percentage points in the 2013 elections. In terms of number of seats won, the BJP improved its lead vis-à-vis the Congress from 33-28 in the 2008 elections to 40-21 in the 2013 elections.

In seats where STs had a population share of less than 25%, the BJP made even bigger gains. In terms of vote share, its lead over the Congress increased from 2.2 percentage points to 3.5 percentage points. The break-up of seats changed from 26-20 in favour of the BJP in the 2008 elections to 31-15 in the 2013 elections. (Chart 3A and 3B: BJP-Congress difference in vote share and seat share in each category in 2008 and 2013).

What explains these trends? Praveen Rai, a political analyst with the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, says the ST communities brought the BJP to power in 2003 because the Congress was seen as having treated them only as an electoral vote bank, which the BJP highlighted.

However, the development agenda pursued by the BJP -- with a similar failure in paying attention to the land, forest, or human rights in general of the tribal population -- means that the party is “no more the first choice” of the community.

The “counter-mobilisation of non-tribal voters” has taken place because they “have been the main beneficiaries of the unbridled development in the state and votaries of the Hindutva agenda”, Rai added.

Our analysis, however, is limited in the sense that it reflects voters’ sentiments only until 2013. In Indian elections, voters are swung not only by long-term factors, but also campaigns and announcements a year or closer to the election.

To what extent even a continued swing of tribal communities away from the B JP translates into again for the Congress this time will also depend on the performance of the Ajit Jogi, an important tribal leader in the state and the first chief minister, who has parted ways with the Congress.

(Abhishek Jha is a Hindustan Times–Mint– How India Lives Data

Journalism Fellow)