BJP MLA Bheema Mandavi killing may hit Congress

Raipur: The April 9 killing of Dantewada BJP MLA Bheema Mandavi by Naxals seems to have changed the poll scenario in election-bound Chhattisgarh, leaving Congress worried.

The three-phase Lok Sabha elections in Chhattisgarh started from April 11.

The Congress, which was hoping to repeat its stupendous performance of the November 2018 assembly elections in the state, appeared concerned that the tragic incident may upset its poll calculations.

“Such incidents normally cost the incumbent ruling party heavily in the polls. In 2013, assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, the then ruling BJP had faced a rout in the tribal belts of Bastar and Rajnandgaon following the Jeeram Ghati incident in the year in which 27 Congress leaders were massacred by Maoists in Bastar district,” a lecturer in anthropology department in Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University observed.

The then ruling BJP, which had swept Bastar division in 2008 assembly elections by securing 11 out of 12 seats in the region, could win only 4 seats in the belt in 2013 assembly polls, held six months after the Jeeram Ghati incident.

Congress swept the November 2018 assembly elections in Bastar by winning 11 out of total 12 seats and hopes to maintain the winning momentum in the 2019 LS polls in the state.

However, the April 9 incident is likely to hurt the prospect of the party in the ongoing LS polls in Chhattisgarh, observers said. The turnout witnessed in the polling booths in Shyamgiri in Dantewada district, where the BJP legislator along with four jawans were killed in the Maoist IED blast on April 9, was a manifestation of anger of voters against Naxals and the state government’s failure to curb Left-wing extremism in Bastar, Raipur-based eminent socialist S. Tiwari said. The Bastar Lok Sabha constituency witnessed a record 78 percent polling.