Congress rebel leader Ajit Jogi held a show of strength at his home turf Marwahi in Bilaspur district on Monday and sought suggestions from his roughly 5,000 supporters to form a new regional party in a bid to trigger disintegration in the party which he served nearly three decades.
Though the former Chief Minister, who was facing a kind of exile in his party for years, managed to bring in about 5,000 people at Kotmi village to exhibit his influence but he failed to get support of Congress MlAs as just four out of the 38 party legislators turned up for the meeting including two from his own family-Renu Jogi (wife) and Amit Jogi (son) who has been expelled from the party this year.
The two other MlAs made their presence felt at Jogi’s meeting were — RK Rai and Siyaram Kaushik.
Amid roaring voice of his supporters, Jogi said, “Now I am free man who will fight for the cause of people of Chhattisgarh.” But he surprisingly avoided to launch any direct attack on Congress which is led by his long time bitter rival Bhupesh Baghel in Chhattisgarh. Baghel has termed Jogi’s show of strength as a ‘complete flop show’.
Jogi collected as many as eight names from his
ardent supporters for his new political outfit
Jogi, the 70-year-old politician who is confined to a wheelchair since April 2004 after a near fatal road accident, roared amid vociferous slogans by his die-hard supporters, “I have decided to form a new party as it has become imperative to save Chhattisgarh’’.
He claimed while releasing a manifesto for his new party which is called ‘Kotmi manifesto’ “if my party comes to power then Chhattisgarh will be the first tax-free State’’.
He also mentioned that his new party would make Chhattisgarh ‘free from Raman-raj.’
Jogi has always been considered a thorn in the flesh of the BJP in Chhattisgarh, and despite the party being in power since December 2003, it has always reacted in panic to any of his direct or indirect remarks referring to the ruling BJP or Chief Minister Raman Singh.
Jogi had successfully engineered a split of 12 BJP MlAs in late 2001 when he was Chief Minister and had accommodated a few of the defected MlAs as Ministers in his Government. He made another bid in 2003 but was caught on tape offering bribes to newly-elected BJP MlAs for their defection when he was voted out of power in the 2003 polls.