The diktat for the senior Congress leaders in Chhattisgarh from the Party High Command in New Delhi this time round was to break the continuing popular wave of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sweeping Chhattisgarh once again with an almost certain hatrick for Chief Minister Raman Singh.
Notwithstanding the killings of top State leaders by Maoists in Bastar on Saturday, the hopes are still riding high in the Congress State leadership albeit riddled with factionalism given the fact that the party might have missed getting closer to the tribal vote bank in the sprawling Bastar region where 11 out of the 12 seats are currently with the BJP.
Saturday’s gory killing of senior Congress leaders by Maoist insurgents once again raked up the issue of whether the tragedy would bring together the Congress leadership in Chhattisgarh atleast this time round.
With some key leaders such as Chhattisgarh State Congress President Nand Kumar Patel killed by the insurgents alongwith some of the other prominent leaders who could have turned the fortune of the Congress party, the debate raging now is whether the Congress party would really make the massacre of leaders an issue in the ensuing Assembly pollsIJ
The grass-roots level Congress workers are angry and restless after the killing of their leaders by Maoists but the question remains whether the Central party high command would take the issue till the polls which is still several months awayIJ
Public memory is short and the Congress Central leadership understands that well enough. There is still no clue as to the continuation of the Parivartan Yatra in the tribal belts after the tragedy as a run up to the Assembly polls with the nagging issue of factionalism where warring groups may claim their right to lead the party in the elections right now.
With a situation like this, it would be prudent to wait and watch. There are no answers emerging right now to the issue of who leads the Chhattisgarh Congress party in Chhattisgarh now. The Central leadership does not seem to be in a hurry to decide in a jiffy. And the warring groups aren’t willing to wait either. Who takes the party’s mantle in Chhattisgarh during the coming months only the time will tell.
Chhattisgarh’s young Congress leader Amit Jogi said that it is difficult to say anything about the security aspect of the tragedy in this sad hour when we have lost so many senior leaders of the party. We would take up the issue later. Amit had this to say when asked if any of the Congress leaders had asked for higher level of security during the Parivartan Yatra : I have no idea whether senior leaders asked for higher level of security but it needs to be understood by the ruling government that there are 3,000 men deployed for security for the Chief Minister and our leaders only had a handful. To top it all, the Chief Minister had asked for more security for himself from the Prime MinisterIJ