ELECTIONS '98 COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

'Atal ko dekh liya, Sonia ko lana hai...'

A little later, I am at the Congress election office, Budda Bagh. Thankfully, the place looks alive, at least from outside. A Congress election vehicle passes by, playing an ingenious election song (a parody of Tum to thehre pardeshi: 'Atal ko dekh liya Sonia ko lana hai Punja par mohar lagana hai...'

Ducking a couple of low doorways and passing through a dark, damp passage, I emerge into an office where Congress candidate Paras Chopra's assistants are holding fort. Chopra is away, but of course I can meet him as soon as he returns, I am assured.

It is another hour before Chopra makes his appearance. He's a tall man, with rare specks of grey in his moustache and a fleshy face that gives him a stand-offish look. I beg to understand why the locals are so confident he will lose.

"Who will vote for a man who will not mingle with the people?" they had asked. "He leaves his house in an air-conditioned car and returns in it. We hardly get to see him!"

Chopra is undaunted by such complaints. "The Congress will win. There is no doubt," he announces.

I hold back a sigh. In the three elections I have survived as a journalist, and the many poll reports I have been forced to go through, I am yet to find a contestant who has NOT been confident of winning.

"The BJP is a bogus party," continues Chopra. "They only talk; they don't do anything. So it is definite that we will get a clear majority. In Chhattisgarh we will get at least 90 seats... No, no, no, the people are not bothered about corruption charges (against the Digvijay Singh government]. They know they are not true. That will not affect them. We will definitely win..."

I take his leave shortly, and slip into the local police station next door. After listening to oozing politics for most of the day, even an encounter with the cops seems like a nice proposition.

The in-charge is City Superintendent of Police (the designation, I guess, is a speciality of Raipur -- it can be equated with deputy superintendent of police anywhere else) A K Pande. Pande is a nice, avuncular figure who happily agrees with me that the election this time is dull, that there is no law-and-order problem in Raipur, that the police haven't really had to gear up for the election because of this, etc, etc.

"The general public," CSP Pande tells me, "is passive. Only the netas and their supporters, and they are an army, are interested. Otherwise..."

Otherwise, the people care two hoots for this election.

Assembly Election '98

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