The BJP-led Madhya Pradesh government is expecting two lakh tribal people from across the state to participate in the 'Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas' mega event in Bhopal to be held on Monday in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The event is to commemorate the birth anniversary of tribal martyr Birsa Munda.
After the MP government declared a state holiday on the occasion, the Union government, too, declared November 15 as nationwide Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas.
Preparations for the high-profile programme is almost complete and Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan took personal stock of the arrangements at the main event venue in Jamboree ground and at Habibganj Railway Station that was on Saturday renamed after Gond (tribal) ruler Rani Kamlapati. The PM will re-dedicate the modernised railway station to the nation.
Before coming to Bhopal around 12.30 pm, the PM will pay tributes at Birsa Munda's statue at Parliament House in New Delhi and inaugurate the Birsa Munda Museum at Ranchi virtually. The PM will be in Bhopal for about three-and-half hours. Eight Union ministers including those linked to MP and 11 BJP tribal leaders (including state ministers, MPs and MLAs) will share dais with Modi at the main event at Jamboree ground.
The PM is scheduled to launch the pilot project of the sickle cell (anaemia) mission aimed at management of the disease that is spreading fast among the tribal populace and the solar energy awareness programmes of the state government on the occasion. CM Chouhan is expected to announce the implementation of the rights for community forest management to the gram sabhas in the tribal areas. Also the implementation of Anusuchit Janjati Sahukar Rinmukti Act, wherein licence will be made mandatory for local moneylenders to give loans in the tribal areas and old loans taken from unlicensed moneylenders will be waived off, will be announced. Some other major scheme announcements by the state government are also being expected.
Way to woo tribal voters
Though the 2023 Assembly polls are two years away, the mega event of November 15, laced with multiple gestures and sops for tribal communities is being looked upon as an attempt of the ruling BJP to regain the tribal voters in Madhya Pradesh who play a decisive role in electoral victories. Also, the party is looking to reach out to tribal populace across the country through the programme, political watchers feel.
The BJP sees withering of tribal support as the reason for the ouster of its 15-year-old government in 2018 Assembly polls. Congress had managed to win 31 out of 47 scheduled tribe reserved seats in that election, thus trumping the BJP to become the single largest party and form the government.
BJP's state in-charge P. Murlidhar Rao made it clear during a recent media interaction in Bhopal that the party is targeting to increase its vote base in the state by 10 per cent by 2023 and that the SC and ST population will be in special focus for this purpose, apart from the other backward classes. Booth level engagements will be undertaken to win over these communities to BJP's fold, he had said.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had worked for years in tribal areas of the state, especially those in western MP (bordering Gujarat) to win over these communities for the BJP and the tribal votes had played an important role in bringing power to the saffron party in 2003. Tribal voters seemed to stick to the BJP for 2008 and 2013 polls, with the party winning as many as 59 out of 84 seats in the tribal dominated areas. But in 2018, the party could manage only 34 of these seats. During the recent bypolls, though the BJP managed to snatch the ST reserved Jobat seat from Congress by fielding a Congress turncoat (Sulochana Rawat), it got a shock as the winning margin in the Khandwa Lok Sabha seat went down from 2.75 lakhs to just over 80,000. Four of the 8 Assembly segments in the Khandwa LS seat are ST reserved.
The emergence of tribal youth organisations like Jai Adiwasi Yuva Sangathan (JAYS) that has a major hold in western MP is a cause of concern for both the major parties, but more so for the BJP as the Congress managed to get one of the founders, Hiralal Alawa, to tilt in its favour in 2018 by giving him an MLA ticket.
The Congress has also kept up its attempts to retain the tribal votes that switched over to its side during 2018 polls. The opposition party took up the issue of atrocities against tribal people citing cases of mass murders, a public lynching and other crimes and made a big issue of the cancellation of holiday (announced in 2019 by Congress government) on the world tribal day on August 9 this year and forced the adjournment of the monsoon session of the Assembly.
BJP had then announced that it would instead give a holiday on November 15 on occasion of Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas. Also, the party organised an event in Jabalpur on September 18 to honour tribal freedom fighters Shankar Shah and Raghunath Shah in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah even as bypolls to the four seats loomed.
Meanwhile, the Congress is also organising a simultaneous tribal convention on November 15 at Jabalpur to mark the birth anniversary of Birsa Munda in presence of ex-chief minister Kamal Nath. The party is also proposing to hold tribal conventions at district level during the coming months to maintain its tribal outreach.
