Rinku aur Rafiq ki shaandaar jodi, jinki khyaati Bijapur se bhi aage nikal gayi hai, ab maidaan mein utrenge (Rinku and Rafiq, the glorious duo, whose fame goes beyond Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district, will now walk into the ground).
After warming up, the opening batsmen look around the field, smirking. Rinku returns to the crease to face the first volley from a newcomer. At an inter-village match here, all eyes are on the untested bowler. His first ball, and he knocks off the middle stump. The visitors collapse in no time.
“Our condition is like the opening batsman. We simply had to go out and win but now I am hiding in someone else’s home,” Prabhariji (name changed because of Maoist threats) told The Telegraph.
Prabhariji was the prabhari (in-charge) of the BJP unit in his village. Soon after the third BJP leader was assassinated in Bastar allegedly by Maoists this year, a friend showed him a list received on WhatsApp.
“Thirty-eight names. We are on the hit list of Maoists. My family and I fled to this village the next day, and left our wheat crop standing,” he tells this newspaper.
Elections and life here are different from the “poll fest” in most parts of India. Helicopters transport men and material at night without lights on to evade Maoist bullets. Candidates travel with plainclothes policemen armed with automatics. Politicians prefer to stay inside their houses in the daylight with guns mounted in the embrasures of their walls.
Roughly 60,000 security personnel have been deployed to guard the 1,961 polling booths and other election-related infrastructure for the 14.72 lakh voters.
“I couldn’t stay cooped up any longer, so I came to watch the match. Right now, I can’t even dream of campaigning in person. We are campaigning only through WhatsApp,” Prabhariji says, showing the number of groups he has forwarded the BJP’s manifesto to.
“But the Congress is campaigning,” he envies.
After gaining power in the state last December, the BJP government went out all guns blazing for the banned CPI (Maoist) that calls the shots in the 4,000sqkm Abhujmarh forests of Bastar.
More than 100 people have been killed this year — four out of five were allegedly Maoists. Bijapur is the worst affected district in the Bastar (ST) constituency. Campaigning in the forest villages across the constituency is negligible.
The Congress has fielded former minister and four-time MLA Kawasi Lakhma, who survived the 2013 Maoist massacre of the state’s Congress leadership. Focusing on price rise this time, he is carrying vegetables and mustard oil to display in his rallies. The BJP has fielded former sarpanch Mahesh Kashyap, known for his role in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad against the conversion of tribals to Christianity.
The challenge for journalists here is not to get an idea of who is voting for whom but whether the person interviewed will vote.
Karan Hemla grew up in a Salwa Judum camp in Bijapur’s Cherpal not far from the site of a recent encounter in which 13 Maoists were killed. The camp has become a resettlement neighbourhood.
Asked about aspirations as young voters, Hemla says: “Congress or BJP, everyone forgets their promises. I am in the final year of BSc and am worried about jobs. I don’t think I will get a job. I follow what (Congress leader) Kanhaiya Kumar says. I have read so much about our rights as adivasis after hearing his speeches.”
Late Kailash Nag’s family lives behind the Jangla police station. He was a mandal prabhari (block in-charge) of the BJP. “His earthmover was pressed into service to dig up a pond when the Maoists arrived and burnt it down. We learnt from others that he was summoned to their meeting (kangaroo court) and shot dead (on March 6),” his brother Kamal, a policeman, tells The Telegraph.
Nag’s parents, widow Kamla (a panchayat member) and schoolgoing sons spend nights in Kamal’s house at the other end of the village since then.
“We don’t feel safe,” Kamla said. “Of course, the family will vote. We are hardcore BJP voters. But I want my sons to go somewhere else, study and get government jobs.”
Bastar voted on April 19
