Chhattisgarh: Is BJP counting on a young IAS officer to win a Congress bastion?
While a number of civil servants have joined politics in India, they usually make the shift post superannuation. So why is the current Raipur collector, the 2005-batch IAS officer Om Prakash Choudhary, reportedly joining politics when he has a promising career of 23 years ahead of him?
Apparently, it is the BJP’s desire to put up a strong candidate at Kharsia — one of the 90 Assembly segments in Chhattisgarh to go to polls in November — that has led the party to pursue Choudhary for the role.
On August 25, reports came that Choudhary has resigned from service.
Why is the BJP so focused on Kharsia, a region in the Raigarh district of the state?
The Assembly segment of Kharsia was created after delimitation in 1977, and has remained a Congress bastion ever since. The Congress has never lost Kharsia — not even in the Janata Party wave of 1977 or the BJP wave of 1990, when Sunderlal Patwa swept to power in united Madhya Pradesh.
The BJP, or its earlier avatar, the Jan Sangh, has tried every trick in the book to win Kharsia — from poaching successful Congress candidates to fielding heavyweights, such as late Dilip Singh Judeo in 1988 during a famous by-election, when then-CM Arjun Singh was seeking an entry to the House via Kharsia.
In 1977, 1980 and 1985, Kharsia was represented by Laxmi Prasad Patel. LP Patel vacated his seat for Arjun Singh in the by-elections. Singh had a tough time, but finally, people gave their vote to the Congress.
In 1990, Arjun Singh helped Nand Kumar Patel get the Congress ticket. Patel won the seat in 1990, in 1993, 1998, 2003 and 2008, and was the sitting MLA when he, along with his son, was killed by Maoists in the infamous Darbha Ghati massacre of 2013, in which almost the entire state leadership of the Congress was wiped out.
The BJP even made LP Patel contest against Nandkumar Patel after the former was replaced by the Congress as its candidate. LP Patel, however, lost to Nandkumar.
In 2013, Nandkumar Patel’s son Umesh was the Congress nominee and won by a handsome margin.
OP Choudhary hails from village Bayang, which lies within the Kharsia Assembly segment. He hails from the Aghariya community, which is politically dominant in the region. Choudhary has an NGO in the name of his sister, who passed away after an ailment. The NGO is quite active in the region, and is connected to many people.
Choudhary is said to be first person from Chhattisgarh to be selected in the IAS after the state was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000. Since then, Choudhary has been focusing on education, and as Collector of the Maoist-affected district of Dantewada, established the Dantewada Education City there. He even received the PM’s Award for Excellence for the initiative in 2013.
In Raipur too, Choudhary has established Nalanda, a 24x7 community learning centre. He has a large public connect and is very active on Twitter, often informing his followers about what he has been up to.
Stories about Choudhary’s struggles are in the public domain, and are often spoken of. His father had passed away when OP was very young. He was offered a government job on compassionate grounds, but refused to take it up at his mother’s behest, whom he had told he would one day join the civil services and become a collector.
“In Chhattisgarh, elections are usually close between the BJP and Congress, and each Assembly segment therefore becomes crucial,” said a BJP leader not wishing to the named — explaining the reason for the BJP wanting Choudhary to contest from Kharsia.
Chhattisgarh has another example of a bureaucrat-turned politician in the form of its first CM, Ajit Jogi. Jogi was a 1970-batch IAS officer, and resigned from the service after serving as Collector Raipur and Collector Indore, to join the Rajya Sabha at the behest of Arjun Singh and PM Rajiv Gandhi.
Will OP Choudhary deliver Kharsia for the BJP?