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RR RUEHBI RUEHCI
DE RUEHBI #0531/01 3170939
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 120939Z NOV 08
FM AMCONSUL MUMBAI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 6723
INFO RUEHNE/AMEMBASSY NEW DELHI 7960
RUEHCI/AMCONSUL KOLKATA 1724
RUEHCG/AMCONSUL CHENNAI 1931
RUEHBI/AMCONSUL MUMBAI 1882

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 MUMBAI 000531 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV IN SOCI
SUBJECT: STATE ELECTIONS IN CHHATTISGARH AND MADHYA PRADESH: PARTIES 
IN PLAY AND REDISTRICTING 
 
REF: MUMBAI 386 
 
¶1. (U) Summary:  In November and December 2008, state elections 
will be held in six out of 29 Indian states.  This round of 
polling is widely perceived as a "semi-final" before the 
national elections, which are due before May 2009.  In Consulate 
Mumbai's consular district, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh have 
been ruled by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governments since the 
last elections in November 2003.  In Chhattisgarh, the Congress 
Party and the BJP are poised for a straight fight, whereas the 
field is more crowded in Madhya Pradesh, with several regional 
parties in addition to the traditional Congress and BJP, 
crowding the ballot.  This is part two in a series of election 
cables on these states; in septels, we will analyze party 
platforms and campaign issues that will likely drive electoral 
outcomes.  End summary. 
 
The Basics: BJP Stronghold in Central India 
 
--------------------------------------------- ----------------- 
 
¶2.  (U) On October 14, the Election Commission announced polling 
dates for five states due to hold assembly elections by the end 
of the year.  It subsequently announced dates for a sixth state 
- Jammu and Kashmir - during the same time period.  In 
Chhattisgarh, which suffers frequent attacks by Naxalite 
insurgents in its southern districts, election polling will take 
place over two days -- November 14 and 20 -- to ensure that 
sufficient security is in place to protect voters and voting 
locations.  In the first phase, 39 assembly districts, including 
the Naxalite-affected southern districts of Dantewara, and 
sub-districts of Bijapur and Jagdalpur, go to polls, while 51 
assembly districts vote in the second phase.  In Madhya Pradesh 
(MP), polling will take place on November 27.  Vote counting 
will take place on December 8, after elections are complete in 
five states.  According to recent voter registration records, 
there are 15 million eligible voters in Chhattisgarh, and 35 
million in Madhya Pradesh.  For the first time in India the 
voter rolls contain a photo of the voter included along with the 
name, which would make fraudulent voting difficult. 
 
¶3. (U) The BJP controls both state legislatures, and dominates 
the parliamentary delegations at the national level.  In the 
November 2003 elections, the BJP won decisive victories against 
incumbent Congress governments in both the states.  In the 
230-seat state assembly in MP, the BJP has 173 members and the 
Congress 38.  In the outgoing state assembly of 90 seats in 
Chhattisgarh, the BJP holds 50 seats, the Congress 37.  Both MP 
and Chhattisgarh have significant scheduled caste (SC/Dalit) and 
tribal (ST) populations, and large numbers of assembly seats are 
reserved for these disadvantaged communities.  Thirty-nine of 
Chhattisgarh's 90 seats are reserved for SC/ST candidates SC - 
10, ST - 29); in MP, 82 of the 230 seats are reserved for 
scheduled castes and tribes (SC - 35, ST - 47).  With 29 and 11 
parliamentary seats respectively, MP and Chhattisgarh account 
for 40 out of 543 seats in the Indian national parliament.  In 
the April 2004 national elections, the two states elected BJP 
majorities.  Of the 29 Lok Sabha seats in MP, the BJP won 25; of 
the 11 seats in Chhattisgarh, 10 seats are held by the BJP. 
 
Urban Voters Gain Electoral Strength 
 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
 ¶4.  (U) These assembly elections will be based on new voter 
rolls published in early October which reflect the new 
constituency boundaries drawn up by the delimitation commission. 
From 2004 to 2007, India underwent a major redrawing of election 
districts to equalize the representation of each district and 
better reflect the population migration from rural to urban 
centers that occurred over the 23 years since constituency 
boundaries were last redrawn.  At the time of the 1971 census, 
less than 20 percent of Indians lived in urban areas.  By the 
2001 census, however, this figure had increased to 28 percent as 
millions of Indians moved from villages to urban areas in search 
of jobs, changing the relative size of urban and rural 
constituencies with urban voters underrepresented in state and 
national legislative bodies.  The redistricting exercise 
corrected this imbalance by redrawing boundaries such that each 
constituency within a state, whether urban or rural, now has 
approximately the same population size. 
 
¶5. (U) The conventional wisdom of political commentators is that 
the 2008 redistricting benefits the BJP, which tends to poll 
stronger in urban areas.  This effect will likely be muted in 
the case of Chhattisgarh and MP, however, which are 
predominantly rural states, with urban concentration levels 
(Chhattisgarh - 20 percent; MP - 26 percent) that are lower than 
the national average and certainly lower than those of their 
neighboring states (Gujarat - 37 percent; Maharashtra - 42). 
 
MUMBAI 00000531  002 OF 003 
 
 
Overall, the formation of new constituencies will make election 
predictions more difficult, as old vote blocks are divided and 
shifted, and candidates face new combinations of voter groups 
and untested electorates. 
 
Straight Fight between the BJP and the Congress in Chhattisgarh 
 
--------------------------------------------- ------------------ 
 
 ¶6. (U) In Chhattisgarh, the BJP is contesting the election with 
incumbent Chief Minister Dr. Raman Singh as the chief 
ministerial candidate.  The Congress, on the other hand, will 
follow its traditional policy of electing a chief minister from 
victorious assembly members, if it garners a majority.  At least 
six Congress leaders are in the race for the chief minister's 
post, including former chief minister Ajit Jogi, nine time 
Congress MP Vidyacharan Shukla, four-time Congress MP Arvind 
Netam, state Congress president Dhanendra Sahu, working 
president Charandas Mahant and All India Congress Committee 
treasurer Motilal Vora.  However, according to a Congress 
source, Renu Jogi, the wife of former chief minister Ajit Jogi, 
might be chosen as the chief minister so that her husband can 
move to national level politics. 
 
¶7. (U) The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) of Uttar Pradesh Chief 
Minister Mayawati has declared candidates for 85 out of 90 seats 
in Chhattisgarh. Media reports indicate that nearly 20 long-time 
party leaders who founded and worked for the party since the 
early nineties are in revolt against the current state president 
Dauram Ratnakar, who is a recent import from the Congress. 
Party veterans allege that Ratnakar has auctioned off tickets to 
the highest bidders and is interested in lining his pockets 
rather than working for long term growth of the party.  The 
revolt by party rank and file could mean that the BSP may not 
make an electoral dent in Chhattisgarh. The Shiv Sena, the 
Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India 
(Marxist) (CPI-M), which have also announced they will be 
fielding candidates (57 all together) are unlikely to impact 
which party ultimately controls the state. End Note.) 
 
MP: 230 Strategies for 230 Constituencies 
 
--------------------------------------------- ---------------- 
 
¶8.  (SBU) In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress will be challenging an 
incumbent BJP government under Chief Minister Shivraj Singh 
Chauhan. Congress has not declared a Chief Minister candidate, 
but the likely contenders include: Suresh Pachauri, former 
central minister and current State Congress President; Jamuna 
Devi, current leader of the opposition and a tribal woman 
legislator; Ajay Singh, current chair of the state campaign 
committee and son of long-time Congress stalwart Arjun Singh; 
and Subhash Yadav, a former deputy chief minister. However, many 
in political circles believe the front runner to be Union 
Minister for Commerce and Industry Kamal Nath.  Mahendra Prasad, 
an independent Rajya Sabha member of parliament who maintains 
close ties to the Congress, told Poloff that there was a 
firestorm of protest from other Congress Party aspirants for the 
Chief Minister when Congress leader and former MP chief minister 
Digvijay Singh proposed Kamal Nath as the chief ministerial 
candidate under whom the Congress should fight the election.  At 
least two other parties are poised to play a role in this 
election:  the BSP and the Bharatiya Jan Shakti Party (BJSP), a 
BJP spin-off led by former MP Chief Minister Uma Bharati.  With 
the prospect of at least a four-cornered race in many 
constituencies, each party will be choosing its candidates 
carefully, taking into account local demographics, caste 
combinations, and specific, local issues, rather than national 
ones. 
 
¶9.  (U) The BSP's electoral strength in MP waxed in the early 
1990s, as new caste-based formulations arose, but waned in the 
late 1990s, as these new groupings broke apart, lost 
organizational coherence, or were accommodated within the 
Congress and the BJP.  With the resurgence of Mayawati in MP, 
and an overall rise in the prominence of the party, a BSP 
revival looks possible in some pockets.  State party president 
Raja Ram Ahirwar told Congenoffs, "In 2003, we polled 7.26 
percent votes, and won only two seats.  This time we will double 
our vote share and will win a startling number of seats." 
Non-BSP interlocutors agreed that the BSP would damage the 
Congress and the BJP in these elections, but were unsure whether 
the impact would be state-wide, or limited to MP's northern 
districts, which border Uttar Pradesh. 
 
¶10.  (U) A BJP leader told Congenoffs that Mayawati has sent in 
ministers to campaign, held caste conventions, and spread money 
widely and generously.  "Mayawati has one objective.  She wants 
to show that she and her party will matter in the next national 
 
MUMBAI 00000531  003 OF 003 
 
 
election, and MP offers her the best chance to do so."  A senior 
representative of the Catholic Church explained that Christians, 
especially in the Jabalpur region, where they are concentrated 
and can make a difference in 3-4 constituencies, have decided to 
strategically vote BSP to protest anti-Christian violence by 
Hindu groups, and the Congress' perceived indifference to the 
plight of this tiny religious minority. 
 
¶11.  (U) In September, former BJP Chief Minister Uma Bharati 
organized the first of several major rallies in the state to 
promote her party, the Bharatiya Jan Shakti Party (BJSP). 
Bharati, a fiery female leader who was famously photographed 
joyously hugging BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi after the 
destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, led the BJP to an 
overwhelming victory in the MP elections in November 2003. 
Within ten months, however, she was unceremoniously removed from 
the chief ministership by the party due to internal strife 
within the party.  Since then, she has drifted in and out of 
opposition to the BJP.  The September rally signals that she 
hopes to take on her former party, which has, in any case, shown 
no desire to have her back.  As an Other Backward Caste (OBC), 
she may be able to tap into lower caste resentment against the 
BJP in this election, as well as provide a home to other BJP 
dissidents. 
 
¶12.  (U) Political scientist Arwind Maru hoped that the BSP, the 
BJSP, and a tribal party - the Gondwana Ganatantra Party - could 
provide a credible alternative to the BJP and the Congress, if 
they were to unite.  However, state Samajwadi Party (SP) leader 
Kalyan Jain, as well as journalists, agreed that a "third front" 
was unlikely, especially since all three parties were battling 
each other for the same vote base in the northern region of MP 
that borders Uttar Pradesh.  Jain said, "It is not possible 
because Mayawati is looking for disgruntled Congress party 
candidates, while Uma Bharati is looking for disgruntled BJP 
candidates.  They are going to contest as many seats as they 
can; any pre-electoral alliance to form a "third front" is not 
in their interest." (Note: The Samajwadi Party won 7 seats in 
the 2003 elections and has named 111 candidates for the current 
MP elections.  End Note.) Anil Dave, the BJP's chief strategist 
for MP concurred.  "For the first time, each MP constituency 
will have at least four strong candidates.  The candidates from 
Mayawati's and Uma Bharati's parties may or may not have the 
capacity to win, but many of them will have the capacity to turn 
a winner into a runner-up.  In this election, we will need 230 
strategies for 230 constituencies." 
 
MP a Bellwether 
 
---------------------- 
 
¶13. (U)  Comment:  Not only are the state assembly elections in 
MP and Chhattisgarh important in themselves because they allow 
the winning party to control important states, but they are also 
being closely watched as barometers of how the Congress Party 
and the BJP stack up against one another going into the national 
elections that will follow shortly.  Of the two states in our 
consulate district facing elections, MP is bigger, more complex, 
and more likely a precursor for the kinds of contests India is 
likely to see in 2009, at least in much of north and western 
India.  While the BJP is in a strong position going into 
elections in both states, neither the Congress nor the BJP are 
assured of straight-forward majorities on their own steam in 
Madhya Pradesh.  Perceiving this, regional parties like the BSP 
and the BJSP have a "two-step" strategy to maximize their quest 
for electoral power, a strategy which has worked for smaller 
regional parties repeatedly in India; they will fight on their 
own in each constituency, with the hope of aligning with one of 
the major parties to form a coalition once the results are in. 
After the election, with their pivotal, tiny band of 
legislators, they can drive a hard bargain and set the two major 
parties against each other.  The Congress faces the problem of 
multiple competing leaders within its ranks in both states who 
may undercut each other's candidates during the campaign. 
Furthermore, if the Congress garners more seats than the BJP, 
but falls short of winning a clear majority, it could find it 
ideologically unpalatable to ally with Bharati's BJSP or the 
BSP, with which it is feuding fiercely in New Delhi and Uttar 
Pradesh.  The BJP has more options for forging alliances in MP. 
In septel, we will discuss the issues and platforms which are 
likely to drive the campaigns in each state.  End Comment. 
FOLMSBEE