Bhupesh Baghel
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A brief biography/ as in 2018
Joseph John, Baghel: Street-fighter who never gave up, December 17, 2018: The Times of India
Bhupesh Baghel, the gritty warrior who just never gave up, is credited with instilling courage in Congress workers to fight against a well-entrenched BJP in Chhattisgarh and rout the mighty Raman Singh government.
Having taken over as PCC chief in the aftermath of Congress defeat in 2013, Baghel, a backward caste leader, had a huge task in hand — revive the state Congress and fight the faction led by former CM Ajit Jogi. Infighting was at its peak then. After three consecutive defeats, the state Congress was in tatters. Days before he took over, nearly the entire frontline leadership of Congress was wiped out in the Jhiram Ghati Maoist massacre. All hope seemed lost.
Baghel stepped up. Sharing a good chemistry with the soft-spoken leader of the opposition T S Singhdeo, Baghel began rebuilding the party from the grassroots, checking erosion. He courageously cast out the seemingly all-powerful Jogi, and began jabbing at the BJP government.
Inside and outside the assembly, Baghel took on the BJP regime head-on, quite in contrast to the previous 10 years when most senior Congress leaders were seen “softpedalling” on the BJP government, and particularly wary of saying anything against Raman Singh. Baghel had no such hesitation and went hammer and tongs at the CM and top ministers.
As his political attacks intensified, cases were registered against Baghel and his family members by Economic Offences Wing (EOW) in connection with an alleged land grabbing case. Baghel insisted it was out of political vendetta.
In April 2018, police arrested journalist Vinod Verma, a close confidant of Baghel, claiming that sex CDs of a minister were found in his possession. An FIR was registered against Baghel and CBI named him in the chargesheet, along with a BJP leader, Kailash Morarka.
Baghel refused to seek bail and stayed in jail for a couple of days before Congress high command persuaded him to come out on bail and focus on election campaigning. Despite criminal cases being filed against him, Baghel was undeterred and intensified his attacks on the CM. BJP leaders saw Baghel as a major political irritant. From Prime Minister Narendra Modi to BJP chief Amit Shah, BJP big guns targeted him during the election campaign. But Baghel had the last laugh.
As a minister in undivided Madhya Pradesh and later in the Ajit Jogi government, Baghel came to be known as an able administrator. He was deputy leader of the Congress legislature party during the first tenure of BJP from 2003-2008. A gradate, he became a legislator for the first time at the age of 32 and has been elected to the assembly four times.
A run for chief ministership
After a landslide victory in Chhattisgarh, Congress has a problem of plenty when it comes to potential CM candidates. It appears that four leaders, PCC chief Bhupesh Baghel, TS Singhdeo, Tamradwaj Sahu and Charandas Mahant, are in the race for chief ministership, though Baghel is the frontrunner.
When Baghel took over, Congress was still reeling from the shock of losing nearly its entire frontline leadership in the Jhiram Ghati Maoist massacre of May 2013. The then PCC chief, Nandkumar Patel, veteran leader V C Shukla, and senior tribal leader Mahendra Karma were among those slain.
Baghel not only revived demoralised party workers, he successfully marginalised former CM Ajit Jogi and his family. Inside and outside the assembly, Baghel took the BJP regime head-on, quite in contrast to the previous 10 years when most senior Congress leaders were seen as “soft” on the BJP government, and particularly wary of saying anything against CM Raman Singh. As his political attacks intensified, cases were registered against Baghel and his family members in connection with an alleged land grabbing case. He even did a stint in jail before the Congress high command persuaded him to come out on bail and focus on election campaigning.
Leader of Opposition T S Singhdeo, a soft-spoken leader who is the perfect foil to the bolder Baghel, is also an aspirant for the top post. Singhdeo (66) is one of the richest politicians in central India, with declared assets of more than Rs 500 crore.
With Congress performing well in the OBC belt in the central plains, sitting MP Tamradwaj Sahu, who is also president of AICC’s OBC cell, is seen as someone who can help Congress win back the politically aware and powerful Sahu community. However, it will be difficult for the Congress to ignore the Kurmis, another OBC community whose prominent face is Baghel.
Kurmis and Sahus constitute about 36% of the state’s population. Another OBC leader waiting in the wings is former Union minister Charandas Mahant.
Rise and fall
As in 2023
Jayprakash S Naidu, Dec 6, 2023: The Indian Express
The defeat of Bhupesh Baghel came almost as surprisingly as his rise. The 62-year-old stepped out from almost nowhere to fill the vacuum left in the Congress Chhattisgarh leadership after the 2013 Jhiram Ghati Naxal attack wiped out its entire top brass, and within five years, had taken the party to power and himself to the post of Chief Minister.
And suddenly, all the unrest bubbling under the surface was in the open: about Baghel’s authoritarianism, his sidelining of rivals, his belief in his own invincibility, his overconfidence, and especially his tone deafness to the concerns of the tribals and minorities (usually Congress focus groups).
A minister once in the Digvijaya Singh-led undivided Madhya Pradesh government, Baghel was picked as the Chhattisgarh Congress chief in 2014 over three other options before the party – first Chhattisgarh CM Ajit Jogi; senior Congress leader and scion of the erstwhile Surguja royal family T S Singh Deo; and second-generation Congress leader Charan Das Mahant.
Baghel prevailed due to his image of being an aggressive leader, at a time when the Congress needed combative faces to take on the Narendra Modi wave. Besides, after leading the Congress to three consecutive losses in Chhattisgarh – 2003, 2008, 2013 – Jogi had lost his charm.
Baghel proved his mettle in his term as PCC chief, organising protests over farmer issues. What further raised his profile was his arrest along with Vinod Verma (now his political advisor) prior to the 2018 elections. He spent several days behind bars in the case involving a fake sex CD targeting a then BJP minister.
Then came the controversy involving the Antagarh bypoll. The Indian Express reported about purported audio tapes suggesting that financial inducements could have been offered to make the Congress candidate pull out of the 2014 Antagarh bypoll, ensuring a walkover for the BJP candidate, and that the Jogis were involved in it.
Months later, Ajit Jogi left the party to form the Janta Congress Chhattisgarh-Jogi (JCC-J).
Even then, when the Congress swept the 2018 Assembly polls, Baghel was seen as only one among four contenders for the CM post, the others being Singh Deo, Mahant and Tamradhwaj Sahu. Baghel won out after much bitterness, and after apparently a deal to pass on the baton to Singh Deo after two-and-a-half years.
However, once in power, Baghel went about consolidating his position, with the half-way point passing without Singh Deo being able to budge him. On the contrary, the CM was seen as undermining the Minister’s authority by a change in word that diluted the implementation of the PESA laws, weakening his position on his tribal turf.
In 2022, a disappointed Singh Deo gave up his panchayat portfolio, in protest over lack of funds for implementation of the Awas Yojna.
It was only in June this year that the high command managed to broker a truce between them in a last push before the polls. Singh Deo got Deputy CM post as a consolation prize, but it was too little, too late. In the recent elections, the Congress was wiped out in Sarguja.
To his credit, Baghel did assiduously carve out a singular space as CM, independent of the blessings of the high command – though he was seen as being in the good books of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. His welfare schemes, resting on a Rs 1.75 lakh crore framework, went a long way in this. Baghel also courted soft Hindutva, with announcements such as Ram Van Gaman Path, and mixed it with regional pride.
With the Muslim population minuscule in Chhattisgarh, it were the Christian tribals (as opposed to those practising their own tribal faith) who felt alarmed. They saw the Baghel government as unable or unconcerning about their interests, particularly when there were incidents of violence where Christian tribals were not allowed to bury their dead in some villages, allegedly at the behest of the BJP.
This impression was strengthened by Baghel’s reply when he was asked about the “conversions” among tribals and atrocities on them; he said more churches had come up under BJP rule. Furthermore, the CM offered compensation to the victim of a communal episode in Biranpur, Bhuneshwar Sahu, saying his community had approached him, while not offering any for the Muslim father-son duo killed in the same violence, saying their family or community did not seek the same.
Baghel’s single-minded plan of increasing paddy procurement to woo farmers paid off initially, but lost steam after the BJP’s counter-promise of Rs 3,100 per quintal as one-time payment.
All these factors reflected in the results in the tribal belt, especially in Narayanpur, Kawardha and Saja, and some seats in Surguja belt. Christian tribal candidate Prabodh Minj not only won his seat but also campaigned for the BJP in other seats, which had decent Christian populations and had traditionally voted for the Congress.
Of the 29 reserved tribal seats, the Congress won just 11. In Naxal-affected Bastar, where there was tension between tribals and those following the Christian faith, a Sarva Adi Dal came up in the final lap and is seen to have eaten into Congress votes. BJP leader Kedar Kashyap who picked up the issue beat the Congress candidate by a huge margin.
There were other tribal groups in the fray which may have hurt the Congress – including the Hamar Raj party formed by ex-senior Congress leader Arvind Netam out of the tribal conglomeration Sarva Adivasi Samaj. Hamar Raj accused the Baghel government of not just weakening PESA, but hurting STs with a new Bill that envisaged quota for OBCs.
This played into the already brewing tribal insecurities, due to Baghel’s aggressive projection as an OBC leader by the Congress, as part of its backward class push, and the rising unemployment.
Rather than trying to keep Netam in good humour, Baghel termed parties such as the Hamar Raj “B team of the BJP”. In the end, the party might have taken enough votes to damage Congress chances in at least two seats narrowly won by the BJP – Ambikapur, where Singh Deo lost by 94 votes (Hamar Raj got 719); and Pathalgaon, where Lok Sabha MP Gomati Sai of the BJP won by 255 votes (Hamar Raj got 1,755 votes).
Then there were the Aam Aadmi Party, JCC-J, Sarva Adi Dal, BSP and Gondwana Gantantra Party (GGP). Together, they polled more votes than the victory margin in Keshkal, Marwahi, Pali Tanakhar, Bilha and Chitrakot, where PCC chief and Lok Sabha MP Deepak Baij lost.
A source close to Baghel admitted, “We misread the GGP presence in some seats. We believed we would get the SC and ST votes, but the alliance of the GGP and BSP hurt us in 8-9 seats, which is huge.”
The BJP built its campaign around the Baghel government’s failure to regularise contractual jobs, the unkept promise of an unemployment allowance, the failure to ban liquor (the BJP instead offered Rs 12,000 per year to married women), and finally corruption, from the coal levy case, to illegal liquor sale case, to the Mahadev app scam case. Several people seen as close to Baghel faced action by the Enforcement Directorate.
Meanwhile, to the end, Baghel’s friction with party leaders continued. There was a high-profile fallout with tribal leader and former PCC chief Mohan Markam, after he made corruption charges against his own government on the floor of the Vidhan Sabha, and was subsequently removed.
When elections came around, there were questions over some of the ticket choices, and mini-rebellions.
A retired IAS officer says Baghel thought best to run the government using deputy collectors and junior officers, with his advisors not well-versed in governance. “Over-confidence was also an issue. The Congress won in Himachal Pradesh (in which Baghel was closely involved) and Karnataka in the last round of elections. The plenary meeting of the party was held in Raipur in 2023. Everyone felt Baghel’s rise in power, and the awe in which other leaders held him, and he felt there was no anti-incumbency,” the former bureaucrat said.
Now, Baghel’s biggest fear will be what happens when the power and awe dissipate. The former CM can expect a knock on the door by the Enforcement Directorate; just a day before polling, it alleged that Baghel had taken Rs 508 crore as protection money from Mahadev app scam accused.
