It is 'feel good versus sympathy' in the prestigious Mahasamund Lok Sabha seat making the choice difficult between strong contenders BJP's Vidya Charan Shukla and former Chief Minister Ajit Jogi, who has bounced back in the contest after the serious accident he met with on Sunday.
Though in the urban areas Shukla is popular among businessmen who are in sizeable numbers, Jogi has come into reckoning strangely after his accident and party workers are trying their best to whip up a sympathy wave to generate votes in his favour.
The audio cassette of Jogi's last speech before he met with the accident is being played all over the constituency covering 2,200 villages. In his address to the party workers, he had said every Congressman should consider himself a Jogi and work for the party with maximum zeal.
"During his chief ministership, Jogi has done a lot for the farmers. We are indebted to him. We are going to vote for him," said 45-year old Manihar, an agricultural labourer of village Chowk Behra, 14 km from the Mahasamund town. He complains Shukla has done nothing at all for the constituency despite being elected to the Lok Sabha several times.
That the choice before the voters is difficult can be gauged from the fact that even Congress supporters admit that though Jogi would get substantial votes in rural areas, Shukla might still surge ahead in the battle of ballots "as the votes will be for BJP and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and not Shukla".
{{/usCountry}}That the choice before the voters is difficult can be gauged from the fact that even Congress supporters admit that though Jogi would get substantial votes in rural areas, Shukla might still surge ahead in the battle of ballots "as the votes will be for BJP and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and not Shukla".
{{/usCountry}}But Vikas Makde, a medicine shop owner, says Jogi does not have a clean image and accident would hardly make any difference in the final outcome. Like Makde, a general store owner Tikaram Patel feels "Vidya bhaiya" will win.
Barring mini-towns, there is no sign of electioneering in the vast constituency along the Orissa border and hardly any flags or banners could be seen in the interior areas. The ususal poll cacophony was missing all over the key constituency.
The local people were enthusiastic over "Dreamgirl" Hema Malini's visit to the constituency and Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani's 'Bharat Uday Yatra' drew a large crowd on Sunday.
To match the tinge of glamour of the tinsel world, Congress plans to utilise the popularity of cine stars Rajesh Khanna and Celina Jaitley to woo the voters.
During a visit to the Congress office, built by Shukla's father Ravi Shankar, Chief Minister of then central province in 1948, party workers seemed to be worried over the physical absence of Jogi and the defection of his confidant Pawan Diwan to BJP.
Going by statistics, the Lok Sabha constituency has eight assembly segments and only one is with Congress, rest having gone to the saffron party in the December 2003 assembly polls.
But residents of far flung villages like Pithora, Tumgaon and Bagbahara say they will vote for Jogi, making it difficult for poll pundits to hazard a guess as to who will win.
Interestingly, even local BJP leaders accept that Jogi might get a chunk of the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and backward caste votes.
Refuting allegations that Shukla had done nothing for the constituency though he represented it as a Congress MP for decades, a local BJP leader Lahnu Rao Madan attributed the lack of development to the "faulty" Congress leadership then.
Madan is happy that NCP workers are working in favour of Shukla who joined BJP recently after quitting NCP.
Sitting in the BJP campaign office in Mahasamund town, a saffron clad sant Agocharanand of VHP accused Jogi's supporters of letting loose a reign of terror in several districts of Chhattisgarh. "We are facing constant 'goondagardi' and intimidation," he complained.
But, these charges were rubbished by Alok Chandrakar, Youth Congress chief of Mahasamund district. "These charges are being levelled by BJP as they are afraid of losing the election," says Ashwini Chandrakar, working president of district Congress committee, Durg.
"During Jogi's chief ministership, work was launched on a 100-bed hospital while the state's first artificial insemination unit was almost on the verge of completion in the district, which now has good roads, schools and drinking water facilities," he said.
As Jogi is convalescing in a Mumbai hospital, a number of prayer meetings have been organised in different parts of the constituency to wish him speedy recovery.
"It is God's grace that I have survived the mishap to serve my people," Jogi said in a statement from his hospital bed, expressing a strong desire to visit his constituency even once before the April 20 polls. While it is difficult to hazard a guess as to what extent Jogi's accident will influence the poll outcome, at least the style of campaign has undergone a sea change. Jogi's accident has created problems for BJP's campaign machinery.
BJP leaders are not any more spewing venom at Jogi, rather they are highlighting the "feel good" factor and the development work done by the Vajpayee government. Instead of attacking Jogi, BJP leaders are raising the issue of foreign origin of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
"On humanitarian grounds we are not making any personal attack on Jogi," admitted a BJP leader and said the party was seeking votes in the name of the good work done by the NDA government and the four-month old BJP government in the state.
Previously, Shukla's campaign was based on the alleged "reign of terror and corruption" during the previous government headed by Jogi.
In Jogi's absence, a former minister in his government Nand Kumar Patel is looking after the campaign while Jogi's supporter Ramadhar Kashyap, a Rajya Sabha member, is camping in Mahasamund.