STATE ELECTIONS IN CHHATTISGARH AND MADHYA PRADESH: PARTIES

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 MUMBAI 000531

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV IN SOCI
SUBJECT: STATE ELECTIONS IN CHHATTISGARH AND MADHYA PRADESH: PARTIES
IN PLAY AND REDISTRICTING

REF: MUMBAI 386


1. (U) Summary: In November and December 2008, state elections
will be held in six out of 29 Indian states. This round of
polling is widely perceived as a "semi-final" before the
national elections, which are due before May 2009. In Consulate
Mumbai's consular district, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh have
been ruled by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governments since the
last elections in November 2003. In Chhattisgarh, the Congress
Party and the BJP are poised for a straight fight, whereas the
field is more crowded in Madhya Pradesh, with several regional
parties in addition to the traditional Congress and BJP,
crowding the ballot. This is part two in a series of election
cables on these states; in septels, we will analyze party
platforms and campaign issues that will likely drive electoral
outcomes. End summary.

The Basics: BJP Stronghold in Central India

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2. (U) On October 14, the Election Commission announced polling
dates for five states due to hold assembly elections by the end
of the year. It subsequently announced dates for a sixth state
- Jammu and Kashmir - during the same time period. In
Chhattisgarh, which suffers frequent attacks by Naxalite
insurgents in its southern districts, election polling will take
place over two days -- November 14 and 20 -- to ensure that
sufficient security is in place to protect voters and voting
locations. In the first phase, 39 assembly districts, including
the Naxalite-affected southern districts of Dantewara, and
sub-districts of Bijapur and Jagdalpur, go to polls, while 51
assembly districts vote in the second phase. In Madhya Pradesh
(MP),polling will take place on November 27. Vote counting
will take place on December 8, after elections are complete in
five states. According to recent voter registration records,
there are 15 million eligible voters in Chhattisgarh, and 35
million in Madhya Pradesh. For the first time in India the
voter rolls contain a photo of the voter included along with the
name, which would make fraudulent voting difficult.


3. (U) The BJP controls both state legislatures, and dominates
the parliamentary delegations at the national level. In the
November 2003 elections, the BJP won decisive victories against
incumbent Congress governments in both the states. In the
230-seat state assembly in MP, the BJP has 173 members and the
Congress 38. In the outgoing state assembly of 90 seats in
Chhattisgarh, the BJP holds 50 seats, the Congress 37. Both MP
and Chhattisgarh have significant scheduled caste (SC/Dalit) and
tribal (ST) populations, and large numbers of assembly seats are
reserved for these disadvantaged communities. Thirty-nine of
Chhattisgarh's 90 seats are reserved for SC/ST candidates SC -
10, ST - 29); in MP, 82 of the 230 seats are reserved for
scheduled castes and tribes (SC - 35, ST - 47). With 29 and 11
parliamentary seats respectively, MP and Chhattisgarh account
for 40 out of 543 seats in the Indian national parliament. In
the April 2004 national elections, the two states elected BJP
majorities. Of the 29 Lok Sabha seats in MP, the BJP won 25; of
the 11 seats in Chhattisgarh, 10 seats are held by the BJP.

Urban Voters Gain Electoral Strength

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4. (U) These assembly elections will be based on new voter
rolls published in early October which reflect the new
constituency boundaries drawn up by the delimitation commission.
From 2004 to 2007, India underwent a major redrawing of election
districts to equalize the representation of each district and
better reflect the population migration from rural to urban
centers that occurred over the 23 years since constituency
boundaries were last redrawn. At the time of the 1971 census,
less than 20 percent of Indians lived in urban areas. By the
2001 census, however, this figure had increased to 28 percent as
millions of Indians moved from villages to urban areas in search
of jobs, changing the relative size of urban and rural
constituencies with urban voters underrepresented in state and
national legislative bodies. The redistricting exercise
corrected this imbalance by redrawing boundaries such that each
constituency within a state, whether urban or rural, now has
approximately the same population size.


5. (U) The conventional wisdom of political commentators is that
the 2008 redistricting benefits the BJP, which tends to poll
stronger in urban areas. This effect will likely be muted in
the case of Chhattisgarh and MP, however, which are
predominantly rural states, with urban concentration levels
(Chhattisgarh - 20 percent; MP - 26 percent) that are lower than
the national average and certainly lower than those of their
neighboring states (Gujarat - 37 percent; Maharashtra - 42).

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Overall, the formation of new constituencies will make election
predictions more difficult, as old vote blocks are divided and
shifted, and candidates face new combinations of voter groups
and untested electorates.

Straight Fight between the BJP and the Congress in Chhattisgarh

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6. (U) In Chhattisgarh, the BJP is contesting the election with
incumbent Chief Minister Dr. Raman Singh as the chief
ministerial candidate. The Congress, on the other hand, will
follow its traditional policy of electing a chief minister from
victorious assembly members, if it garners a majority. At least
six Congress leaders are in the race for the chief minister's
post, including former chief minister Ajit Jogi, nine time
Congress MP Vidyacharan Shukla, four-time Congress MP Arvind
Netam, state Congress president Dhanendra Sahu, working
president Charandas Mahant and All India Congress Committee
treasurer Motilal Vora. However, according to a Congress
source, Renu Jogi, the wife of former chief minister Ajit Jogi,
might be chosen as the chief minister so that her husband can
move to national level politics.


7. (U) The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) of Uttar Pradesh Chief
Minister Mayawati has declared candidates for 85 out of 90 seats
in Chhattisgarh. Media reports indicate that nearly 20 long-time
party leaders who founded and worked for the party since the
early nineties are in revolt against the current state president
Dauram Ratnakar, who is a recent import from the Congress.
Party veterans allege that Ratnakar has auctioned off tickets to
the highest bidders and is interested in lining his pockets
rather than working for long term growth of the party. The
revolt by party rank and file could mean that the BSP may not
make an electoral dent in Chhattisgarh. The Shiv Sena, the
Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India
(Marxist) (CPI-M),which have also announced they will be
fielding candidates (57 all together) are unlikely to impact
which party ultimately controls the state. End Note.)

MP: 230 Strategies for 230 Constituencies

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8. (SBU) In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress will be challenging an
incumbent BJP government under Chief Minister Shivraj Singh
Chauhan. Congress has not declared a Chief Minister candidate,
but the likely contenders include: Suresh Pachauri, former
central minister and current State Congress President; Jamuna
Devi, current leader of the opposition and a tribal woman
legislator; Ajay Singh, current chair of the state campaign
committee and son of long-time Congress stalwart Arjun Singh;
and Subhash Yadav, a former deputy chief minister. However, many
in political circles believe the front runner to be Union
Minister for Commerce and Industry Kamal Nath. Mahendra Prasad,
an independent Rajya Sabha member of parliament who maintains
close ties to the Congress, told Poloff that there was a
firestorm of protest from other Congress Party aspirants for the
Chief Minister when Congress leader and former MP chief minister
Digvijay Singh proposed Kamal Nath as the chief ministerial
candidate under whom the Congress should fight the election. At
least two other parties are poised to play a role in this
election: the BSP and the Bharatiya Jan Shakti Party (BJSP),a
BJP spin-off led by former MP Chief Minister Uma Bharati. With
the prospect of at least a four-cornered race in many
constituencies, each party will be choosing its candidates
carefully, taking into account local demographics, caste
combinations, and specific, local issues, rather than national
ones.


9. (U) The BSP's electoral strength in MP waxed in the early
1990s, as new caste-based formulations arose, but waned in the
late 1990s, as these new groupings broke apart, lost
organizational coherence, or were accommodated within the
Congress and the BJP. With the resurgence of Mayawati in MP,
and an overall rise in the prominence of the party, a BSP
revival looks possible in some pockets. State party president
Raja Ram Ahirwar told Congenoffs, "In 2003, we polled 7.26
percent votes, and won only two seats. This time we will double
our vote share and will win a startling number of seats."
Non-BSP interlocutors agreed that the BSP would damage the
Congress and the BJP in these elections, but were unsure whether
the impact would be state-wide, or limited to MP's northern
districts, which border Uttar Pradesh.


10. (U) A BJP leader told Congenoffs that Mayawati has sent in
ministers to campaign, held caste conventions, and spread money
widely and generously. "Mayawati has one objective. She wants
to show that she and her party will matter in the next national

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election, and MP offers her the best chance to do so." A senior
representative of the Catholic Church explained that Christians,
especially in the Jabalpur region, where they are concentrated
and can make a difference in 3-4 constituencies, have decided to
strategically vote BSP to protest anti-Christian violence by
Hindu groups, and the Congress' perceived indifference to the
plight of this tiny religious minority.


11. (U) In September, former BJP Chief Minister Uma Bharati
organized the first of several major rallies in the state to
promote her party, the Bharatiya Jan Shakti Party (BJSP).
Bharati, a fiery female leader who was famously photographed
joyously hugging BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi after the
destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, led the BJP to an
overwhelming victory in the MP elections in November 2003.
Within ten months, however, she was unceremoniously removed from
the chief ministership by the party due to internal strife
within the party. Since then, she has drifted in and out of
opposition to the BJP. The September rally signals that she
hopes to take on her former party, which has, in any case, shown
no desire to have her back. As an Other Backward Caste (OBC),
she may be able to tap into lower caste resentment against the
BJP in this election, as well as provide a home to other BJP
dissidents.


12. (U) Political scientist Arwind Maru hoped that the BSP, the
BJSP, and a tribal party - the Gondwana Ganatantra Party - could
provide a credible alternative to the BJP and the Congress, if
they were to unite. However, state Samajwadi Party (SP) leader
Kalyan Jain, as well as journalists, agreed that a "third front"
was unlikely, especially since all three parties were battling
each other for the same vote base in the northern region of MP
that borders Uttar Pradesh. Jain said, "It is not possible
because Mayawati is looking for disgruntled Congress party
candidates, while Uma Bharati is looking for disgruntled BJP
candidates. They are going to contest as many seats as they
can; any pre-electoral alliance to form a "third front" is not
in their interest." (Note: The Samajwadi Party won 7 seats in
the 2003 elections and has named 111 candidates for the current
MP elections. End Note.) Anil Dave, the BJP's chief strategist
for MP concurred. "For the first time, each MP constituency
will have at least four strong candidates. The candidates from
Mayawati's and Uma Bharati's parties may or may not have the
capacity to win, but many of them will have the capacity to turn
a winner into a runner-up. In this election, we will need 230
strategies for 230 constituencies."

MP a Bellwether

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13. (U) Comment: Not only are the state assembly elections in
MP and Chhattisgarh important in themselves because they allow
the winning party to control important states, but they are also
being closely watched as barometers of how the Congress Party
and the BJP stack up against one another going into the national
elections that will follow shortly. Of the two states in our
consulate district facing elections, MP is bigger, more complex,
and more likely a precursor for the kinds of contests India is
likely to see in 2009, at least in much of north and western
India. While the BJP is in a strong position going into
elections in both states, neither the Congress nor the BJP are
assured of straight-forward majorities on their own steam in
Madhya Pradesh. Perceiving this, regional parties like the BSP
and the BJSP have a "two-step" strategy to maximize their quest
for electoral power, a strategy which has worked for smaller
regional parties repeatedly in India; they will fight on their
own in each constituency, with the hope of aligning with one of
the major parties to form a coalition once the results are in.
After the election, with their pivotal, tiny band of
legislators, they can drive a hard bargain and set the two major
parties against each other. The Congress faces the problem of
multiple competing leaders within its ranks in both states who
may undercut each other's candidates during the campaign.
Furthermore, if the Congress garners more seats than the BJP,
but falls short of winning a clear majority, it could find it
ideologically unpalatable to ally with Bharati's BJSP or the
BSP, with which it is feuding fiercely in New Delhi and Uttar
Pradesh. The BJP has more options for forging alliances in MP.
In septel, we will discuss the issues and platforms which are
likely to drive the campaigns in each state. End Comment.
FOLMSBEE