Even though 12 of the 20 seats going to polls on November 7 in Chhattisgarh are reserved for Scheduled Tribes, both the ruling Congress and the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party are fervently courting Other Backward Class (OBC) voters, who comprise a significant portion of the population in areas like Rajnandagon, Kabeerdham, Kanker district, Jagdalpur, Dantewada, and Bastar. This is despite many of the seats having over 50% Adivasi population.
While the Congress is banking on the promise of a caste census, farm loan waivers, and community centres for each community, the BJP is principally relying on representation of OBCs in the Narendra Modi Cabinet, the number of OBC Chief Ministers from the party, and the fact that the PM also hails from the community. But amidst this, even BJP campaign workers at the district and constituency levels are unable to escape conversations around a caste census, with some even admitting, albeit at a personal level, that one such survey should be held and that the party leadership’s silence was not helping.
About 150 km west of Raipur, in the lanes of Mohla block, a Tempo Traveller stood outside a small two-room Congress party office. The building was covered with posters of the party’s candidate for the Mohla-Manpur Assembly constituency and incumbent MLA Indrashah Mandavi. Reserved for the Scheduled Tribes, the constituency was until recently part of the Rajnandgaon district. Eager party workers waited to welcome the State’s national secretary in-charge, Chandan Yadav, for a campaign meeting.
