Chhattisgarh polls: Who will win Patan seat - Bhupesh Baghel or his nephew Vijay?

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel is a five-term MLA from the Patan Assembly constituency. And it’s in this constituency where the Indian National Congress-Bharatiya Janata Party rivalry may become personal.

The BJP candidate is Vijay Baghel, his nephew, who is currently an MP from the Durg Parliamentary seat, under which the Patan Assembly seat falls.

Bhupesh Baghel has been contesting the Patan Assembly seat since 1993 and had a winning streak till 2008 when Vijay Baghel defeated him with a margin of around 8,000 votes.

In the last 15 years, Chhattisgarh has seen six elections; Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha. Among them, the 2008 Assembly and 2019 Parliamentary elections were the only two times when the BJP received more votes than the INC in Patan.

On both occasions, Vijay Baghel was the BJP candidate. Of the three Assembly elections (2003, 2008, and 2013) where the uncle and nephew sparred against each other, Bhupesh Baghel won twice.

THE KURMI FACTOR

Patan, since 1977, has favoured Kurmi candidates owing to its significant Kurmi population, and the uncle-nephew duo belong to the group. Kurmi is a subcaste that falls under the umbrella of Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

In 1977, the Janta Party enjoyed a landslide victory, winning 230 out of 320 assembly seats in undivided Madhya Pradesh against the INC. Patan, at the time elected the Congress party’s Kejuram Verma, a Kurmi candidate. The Congress lost this seat only in 1990 to the BJP.

In 1993, Bhupesh Baghel, then all of 32, won this seat back for the Congress, defeating Kejuram Verma, who had then moved to the Bahujan Samaj Party. Bhupesh Baghel was a minister in the Digvijay Singh-led government in 1998.

BHUPESH BAGHEL'S POPULARITY IN PATAN

Bhupesh Baghel has a strong support base in Patan. Despite losing the 2008 Assembly elections, his votes (in absolute numbers) have been consistently increasing, from around 51,000 in 2008 to around 68,000 in 2013, to more than 84,000 in 2018.

There is also a relationship between Baghel’s support base and voter turnout. Patan has a higher turnout than the state average when it comes to Assembly seats. Whenever voter turnout has increased significantly, Bhupesh Baghel’s chances of victory have been higher. For example, in 2008, the turnout at Patan declined by six per cent, and he was defeated by Vijay Baghel. The state-level turnout that year declined by less than one per cent.

WHICH BAGHEL IN 2023?

Bhupesh Baghel has won this seat in five out of six Assembly elections he has faced. However, his victory margin has never been in double digits, except in 2018, when he defeated Motilal Sahu of the BJP by a margin of 17 per cent votes. On every other occasion, he won the seat with less than seven per cent votes. The 2019 Lok Sabha elections posed a concern for Bhupesh Baghel: his party’s candidate received 14 per cent fewer votes than BJP’s Vijay Baghel, just six months into his chief ministership.

Congress has not announced its candidate from Patan yet. However, the current CM is the incumbent MLA, who is the most likely candidate. In this scenario, which Baghel will have the upper hand? Mid-December will tell us who Patan's choice is. An interesting electoral battle awaits us.