In Naxal shadow, Chhattisgarh to weigh freebies in 1st phase poll

By Manish Anand

New Delhi, November 5: Twenty Assembly seats in Chhattisgarh will go to polls on Tuesday after curtains came down on high voltage campaigning which saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi taking the blessings of Vidhyasagr Maharaj at the Chandragiri Jain Mandir in Dongargarh in the state. Several of the Assembly seats falls in the Left Wing Extremism (LWE) districts and the Maoists have given a boycott call to the elections.

The Congress is widely known to be in a comfortable position in Chhattisgarh on the basis of the popularity of the incumbent Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel. The chief minister is credited within the Congress for helping the party build a strong base among the OBC constituencies.

The regions going to the poll on Tuesday stays in the shadow of the Maoist violence and most recently 11 police personnel were ambushed by the Naxalites in April this year. Major Maoist attacks were reported in 2021, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2014, while the region is reckoned to be the last fort of the Maoists.

Theatrics came to the fore before the electioneering came to an end on Sunday. Union Minister for Home Affairs Amit Shah challenged the incumbent chief minister for a debate on achievements of the Central government and the Congress administration in the state. Baghel later accepted the challenge for the debate and asked Shah to fix date and time for him to argue his case against performance of the 15 years of the BJP government in Chhattisgarh and five years of his in the state.

While Modi, Shah, and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath sought to infuse life in the BJP campaign in Chhattisgarh, the Congress is counting on the welfare package of the Baghel government to retain power in the state. The state has set out to be an electoral battleground of freebies with the Congress and the BJP competing with each other to offer better package to the people.

The BJP has also come out with a set of 20 guarantees which include cash dole outs to married women, Rs 10 lakh medical coverage, higher assured price for the procurement of paddy. The Congress has also a set of guarantees going into the polls, which include unemployment allowances, cash doles to women, subsidised LPG cylinders and so on.  

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About The Author

Manish Anand

Manish Anand is a senior journalist with more than two decades of hardcore reporting on beats such as Prime Minister’s Office, Parliament, BJP, Congress, Planning Commission, NITI Aayog, and scores of Union Ministries.

His past has been with The New Indian Express, The Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle, and The Statesman.

For about 15 years, Manish was also a regular commentator and host for talks on AIR on foreign affairs.

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