In PV Narasimha Rao’s cabinet he was the cabinet minister in charge of parliamentary affairs. Shukla was information and broadcasting minister way back in 1970s and is still remembered for his iron-fist handling of the media during the Emergency. But the Congress high command did not take the risk of antagonizing Jogi who wanted to be nominated only from Mahasamund, forcing the party to ignore Shukla’s daughter. In the Lok Sabha poll, the party has fielded Karma’s son Deepak Karma as its nominee from Bastar. Another senior leader Uday Mudaliar’s wife Alka was pitched against chief minister Raman Singh in Rajnandgaon, but she lost.
The then Pradesh Congress Committee president Nandkumar Patel’s son Umesh and former leader of the opposition Mahendra Karma’s wife Devati, for example, got elected to the state assembly. She was left out even as the party gave tickets to the kin of all prominent leaders killed in the Naxal ambush in Bastar last year. After all, he had his way in getting himself nominated from Mahasamund constituency despite Vidya Charan Shukla’s elder daughter and political heir Pratibha Pandey being the main claimant to the seat. To be sure, Jogi’s clout in Congress headquarters has not diminished much. Only thing is that I need to do physiotherapy for half an hour every morning,” he says. “I am still attending 10 to 11 meetings every day. Jogi claims the accident has not impacted his political career, and he has been in touch with his constituency all the time. Only last year, Jogi bought electronic legs, allowing him to walk cautiously with the help of the battery-powered device. “It was all sympathy votes then,” claims one Sailendra Sahu of Bhunranga village, referring to the car accident in which Jogi suffered spinal and head injuries. Will Jogi be able to repeat such a success this time?
In 2004, this astute politician surprised many when he won from the Mahasamund Lok Sabha seat by a record 1.18 lakh votes when seven out of eight assembly segments of this parliamentary constituency were then held by BJP. Also, Jogi’s skill in poll management is something that his rivals have always been wary of. Mahasamund is a Sahu-dominated constituency where a division of votes on caste lines stands to harm the prospects of the BJP candidate. But he can’t afford to undermine Jogi’s alleged moves either. He has no direct evidence to claim that his namesakes, including the ones whose total assets are as paltry as Rs 4,000 and Rs 8,000 (according to affidavits filed with the Election Commission) were actually placed as a part of Jogi’s election strategy.
The real McCoy, BJP candidate and Mahasamund’s current member of parliament Chandu Lal Sahu, blames Jogi for the “namesake politics”.
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