As Digvijay Singh is aiming at a hat-trick by winning the elections for a third time in a row, waiting for his full term to be over may not help. Dismissing the Cassandras in his own party and outside, Digvijay Singh is striking the confident posture of a certain victor. According to him, elections are not fought on the agenda of economic development but on political strategy. He quotes the example of Laloo Yadav who has been winning elections in Bihar despite his failure to develop the State.

With a view to bringing the party and administration into election mode, the Chief Minister has decided to lay the ground work in right earnest. He has advanced public contact programmes. Every year this programme (gram and nagar sampark tours) is held in April-May. This year, too, public contact tours were to be conducted between April 20 and 26. But the Chief Minister has now suddenly advanced the contact campaign to January or February. He has even fixed the dates. According to sources, the Chief Minister has directed the officials to launch the campaign from January 29 to February 4 next year. This has set political circles abuzz.

The Chief Minister’s secretariat sources have confirmed that elections were certainly on the mind of the Chief Minister when he decided to advance the public contact drive. During these campaigns, people’s grievances are solved on the spot by the officials and the ministers. Political observers see significance in the Chief Minister opting for the early dates for the contact programme. His intention is to search for effective party candidates for the elections. He does not want to solely depend on local satraps and the party’s area legislators and wants to interview the probable candidates himself. As a first step, he consulted the legislators during the recent Vidhan Sabha session. The exercise went on during the whole session at the Vidhan Sabha office of the Chief Minister. Every legislator of the party from all the 45 districts was called for discussion.

The Chief Minister is first concentrating on such constituencies which are strongholds of the BJP. He has adopted the strategy of eroding the BJP base by offering Congress membership to disgruntled BJP workers. The Chief Minister sought views during extended discussions on the political situation, winning prospects and progress of development works. He also wanted to know whether there was coordination between the district administration and the Congress functionaries. He is trying to solve such problems of the districts as are pinpointed by the legislators and he has already directed the Collectors to this effect. The legislators wanted a free hand to get the non-cooperating bureaucrats transferred. A number of legislators were livid that the in-charge ministers of the districts were not consulting the respective MLAs before taking important decisions concerning the districts. This has put them in an awkward position before the people.

Digvijay Singh’s nine-year rule which he completed on December 7, 2002, was nothing to cheer about. There is only one entry on the credit side—that he has become politically stronger. There is virtually no serious challenger to him as most of his rivals are not in Madhya Pradesh today. The Shukla brothers and Ajit Jogi are in Chhattisgarh State. Madhavrao Scindia is no longer alive and Arjun Singh has shifted his area of operation to Central politics. There is only one challenger left in Madhya Pradesh now—Kamal Nath, AICC general secretary. However, he has been tied to Delhi. Moreover, Kamal Nath blows hot and cold occasionally but never tries to seriously challenge Digvijay Singh as his replacement. In these conditions, it was smooth sailing for Digvijay Singh to complete nine years in the saddle. Performance-wise, Digvijay Singh is best known as an experimenting chief minister. He turned Madhya Pradesh into a laboratory for his dream projects like panchayati raj, district government and gram swaraj. But these projects exist only on paper. Their application and implementation have miserably failed, thanks to the bureaucracy and politicians who have vested interests in the failure of these projects. These schemes generated much disaffection among the legislators and local level politicians, as they tended to lose power and leverage with the village-based leaders.

During his nine-year rule, Digvijay Singh has completely failed to develop any infrastructure in the State. Power and roads have become emotive issues today. The Government’s non-performance in these sectors has now been projected as a top election issue by the BJP as it has the potential to sink the Digvijay government. As the continuing power crisis would dog the State for the next three years at least and become grim next summer, the Chief Minister is opting for early elections. The recent hike in power rates which the BJP is exploiting politically has complicated the situation for Digvijay Singh. The move has actually been resented by the Congress legislators as they find it difficult to face the electorate.

Another reason which pushed the Chief Minister towards early polls is the decision of the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party to fight the Assembly elections from all the constituencies. He does not want to give them time to prepare for the elections. The SP and BSP’s decisions would surely have a damaging effect on the Congress Party’s prospects. So far, the politics in the State was completely polarised between the BJP and the Congress. In the event of triangular or multi-cornered contests, the BJP would reap the benefit as the traditional Congress votes would be divided and a big chunk would go to the SP and the BSP. Moreover, the BJP and the BSP are likely to enter into election tie-ups. This has rung a danger bell for the Congress and Digvijay Singh is also well aware of the implication of the divided vote bank of Dalits and Muslims. That is why Digvijay Singh is planning to make holes in the BJP strongholds.