Stakes are high for this assembly seat in MP

The battle for Maihar in the upcoming bypolls is crucial for the Congress as well as the BJP. Here’s why.

The February 13 bypoll to Maihar assembly seat, part of the Satna Lok Sabha constituency in Madhya Pradesh, is crucial not just for the Congress, but also for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, because of the prestige of the people involved. How the seat fell vacant is an interesting story. It revolves around Narayan Tripathi, a man of many parts.

Although in 2013, the BJP won over two-thirds majority in the state assembly elections, it was the Congress that bagged the Maihar seat in an electoral anachronism. Exactly how or why Tripathi, the Congress member of the legislative assembly from this seat, shifted sides ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections is not known, although speculation is aplenty.

What is known is that even two days before he changed sides in 2014 and joined the BJP, Tripathi had been by the side of Congress leader from Satna-Rewa, Ajay Singh, the son of former Union minister and former chief minister Arjun Singh.

Not only had Tripathi campaigned for the Congress, he had also been the Congress' Sherpa in the region in the election, accompanying Union minister Rajiv Shukla as well as actor Amisha Patel, who were campaigning for the Congress.

On the other hand, those who know Tripathi say his defection was hardly surprising: He was earlier with the Samajwadi Party and joined the Congress months before the 2013 assembly polls. As the Lok Sabha elections came close, a swathe of Congress leaders queued up to join the BJP. Tripathi was one of them.

Not surprisingly, Tripathi negotiated with the BJP to get the assembly ticket again.

Naturally, the Congress is livid. “We are going to teach party hopper Tripathi a lesson this time,” Singh was quoted as saying by the PTI from Maihar.

“The BJP has also realised its mistake by taking him into its fold, as Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who had earlier announced that he will be in Maihar since the beginning for campaigning, has not yet arrived here. Now, we have heard that he will be coming only for the last three days of electioneering, which shows that the fight is not going to be easy for them,” Singh said.

Why is the Maihar seat, just another among the 230 seats in the assembly, so important?

One, because of where it is located. The Satna-Rewa region is supposed to be a Congress bastion and a defeat -- that too at the hands of a defector -- would be a major setback for the reputation of Singh, the MP from the Satna parliamentary seat.

But recent history also comes into play.

In November 2015, the Congress won a stupefying victory in another by-election, in Ratlam, in the same state. That was a Lok Sabha seat, and a by-election was necessitated by the death of Dilip Singh Bhuria, who had been a traditional Congressman, but had joined the BJP and had won the seat -- for the first time, for the BJP in recent history.

Then Kantilal Bhuria contested and won the seat back for the Congress in a by-election -- thus raising the number of MPs the party has in the Lok Sabha from 44 to 45.

If the Congress is able to pull off another victory by ensuring Tripathi’s defeat on the grounds that he is a serial defector and ought to be punished, it could mark a new turn in the politics of the state.

The Ratlam Lok Sabha seat was won back by the Congress by a margin of nearly 90,000 votes: this, months after the party lost the seat by a similar margin. If it wins Maihar as well, the party will see this as an endorsement of its campaign: that widespread rural distress and migration from the state suggest a crisis for the ruling BJP.

Congress has given the ticket to Manish Patel to consolidate backward class votes in the Brahmin-dominated seat. Patel is not a ‘loyal Congressman’: he joined the Congress after quitting the Bahujan Samaj Party.

But campaigning is in high gear. It is not about the numbers -- with two-thirds majority already under its belt, the BJP doesn’t need additional MLAs. It is more about the high stakes for the Congress that the seat represents.

One swallow does not a summer make. One assembly seat more or less will not put Chouhan’s popularity in question. But if the BJP loses this seat -- the second election in four months -- it could force the chief minister to review and update some of his policies.

In a world dominated by low agricultural prices, Madhya Pradesh has also been hit by erratic rainfall all through 2015. In fact, so concerned was Chouhan about the political fallout of the failure of the monsoon that he had to adopt a prime ministerial tactic: He took to broadcasts on All India Radio asking farmers to be ‘patient, not lose hope and be courageous’ and convened a special session of the assembly in November to get the House to approve the disbursal of enhanced relief to them.

The Maihar assembly election will be watched closely: not for the outcome of the election alone but also whether it represents a new trend in the politics of the state.