Scandals, scams and sleaze: Chhattisgarh’s history with tape-gate politics

Chhattisgarh has had a history of scandals, taped and distributed. In 2003, Ajit Jogi was suspended from Congress after BJP released an audiotape in which he was allegedly heard offering money to buy BJP MLAs, with whom he intended to form an alternative government with Congress support.

A similar scenario played out in 2015, with almost the same players too. Audiotapes accessed by media organisations suggested that Jogi and his son had “fixed” the Antagarh bypoll by making the Congress candidate withdraw and providing BJP with an easy win.

The Indian Express had, at that time, published tapes of purported audio conversations between Jogi, his son Amit and Chief Minister Raman Singh’s son-in-law Puneet Gupta. The publication had also published conversations allegedly between Manturam Pawar, the Congress candidate who withdrew from the bypolls, and two Jogi loyalists.

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The conversations, allegedly between key players in the bypoll, showed financial inducements being offered to the Congress candidate for him to withdraw and provide a walkover to the BJP— which is what had happened, with the BJP candidate winning by over 50,000 votes against its sole opponent.

Pawar had later switched over to the BJP, while the fallout of the tapes had resulted in Amit Jogi being suspended for “anti-party” activities. In 2016, both senior Jogi and Amit resigned from the party to form the Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (JCC), which is contesting the upcoming elections in an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

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Congress was hit by another major scandal when its state chief Bhupesh Baghel was sent to jail by a special CBI court after he was accused of circulating a “sex CD” showing Rajesh Munat, the state’s minister for Public Works Department, in an allegedly “compromising position”. Munat, Chief Minister Raman Singh’s loyalist in the party, had termed it as fake and called for an investigation.

Baghel was one of the five accused in the scandal, which had rocked the state’s politics almost exactly a year before the state was to go to polls. The accused also involved a BJP leader, Kailash Murarka, who was expelled by the party recently. CM Singh had called it an “unfortunate incident” and a political conspiracy to end the career of a minister and an insult to women.

The politics of audiotape has returned to haunt Chhattisgarh politics again. On October 17, the Congress complained to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), stating that a self-styled godman named Kambal Waale Baba had allegedly tried to lure one of its MLAs into BJP. The party had alleged that the MLA was being “poached” at the behest of BJP, and stated that the party had audio tapes of the purported conversations.

The chief minister had, however, refuted the allegations.

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“The BJP is confident of winning 65 seats in the elections and it has no need to do such things,” Singh had said, adding that there are several such godmen engaged in ‘jugad’ (arrangements) to run their businesses, and that the BJP has no connection with them.

The BJP was left in a defensive mode again in 2017 when one of the state cabinet ministers, Brijmohan Agrawal, was accused of illegal purchase of forest land and building a resort on it. The alleged scam is expected to be one of the moot points for the Opposition during the upcoming polls.

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