With Modi, Amit Shah ruling Delhi, Raman Singh fears threat of dissidence

Chhattisgarh: With a new dispensation in charge in Delhi, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh is suddenly waking up to the potential threat of dissidence. After the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo took over the reins of the party, his unquestioned supremacy in state party matters stands diluted as leaders in the party, not quite comfortable with his leadership, have found ears to listen to them at the top. They might not throw a challenge to his position as chief minister, but they certainly would keep him in a state of wariness.

Most of Singh’s years in office as CM overlapped with those of Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari as the party chief. Relations between the two Thakurs were more than cordial. Gadkari was accused of having business interests in the mineral rich Chhattisgarh. Raman Singh had a privileged and convenient relationship with the party leadership in these years.

He had led the party to power for the first time in 2003 as the chief of the state unit of the party, a post he soon had to relinquish after taking over as chief minister. Nand Kumar Sai, the tallest tribal leader in the state then, was appointed in his place the same year. Sai was an advocate of the CM’s chair going to a tribal and did not see any wrong in raising the demand publicly from time to time. He was replaced in a year by another tribal, and then by another - all faceless, lightweight tribal leaders. The arrangement worked and the party smoothly sailed through the second and third hustle at the elections.

The post fell vacant once again with the election of the state party chief Ram Sevak Paikra to the state assembly in 2013. He was a Zila Panchayat member when he was ’elected’ in 2010 during Gadkari’s era. Paikra was made a minister in the state and the party chief’s post went to Vishnu Dev Sai, the sitting MP from Raigarh. Sai had held the office before Paikra. Sai, however, could not last long in office as within a few months he got re-elected for Lok Sabha and found a berth in the Modi government.

The Modi-Shah team took their own time in announcing the name of the replacement. For the first time, Raman Singh’s recommendation did not receive instant ratification. With sudden change in equations, many claimants cropped up. Many undertook intense lobbying in Delhi - a first for the state. The veteran undercover dissidents like the senior minster Brij Mohan Agarwal and Prem Prakash Pandey were seen spending much time networking in Delhi. The ostensible reason was courtesy calls but observers were quick to see more to it. The duo had spent time canvassing in Varanasi for Modi and was reported to have developed a cordial relationship with the Modi-Shah duo.

When the new appointments were announced last week, Raman Singh’s choice - an OBC lightweight in Dharamlal Kaushik, the ex-speaker of the state assembly who had lost in 2013 - was honoured.

But as if to balance it another announcement was made at the same time. Saroj Pandey was made one of the general secretaries. Pandey, the outgoing chief of the party’s women wing was a rapidly rising leader in the state and a member of Lok Sabha from Durg when she was re-nominated to contest from the same constituency in 2014. She reportedly tried hard till the last moment to get the seat changed to Bilaspur but was ultimately denied a change. Pandey had great apprehensions of a trap waiting for her there. The efforts from Saudan Singh, the party general secretary in the state taking care of the interests of the RSS, and a political well wisher of Pandey could not rescue her from the seat. When the results were announced, Pandey turned out to be the only BJP candidate who lost. Her defeat gave chance to opposition leaders like Ajit Jogi to claim publicly that he had been “offered money” from certain quarters in the BJP to help get Pandey defeated.

Raman Singh, after a decade long smooth run with only a decimated, leaderless and demoralised Congress as opposition, will now have to earmark much more time to keep an eye on the dissidents within the party.