SUMAN K SHRIVASTAVA
Ranchi, Oct. 26: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit on November 15 to tribal icon Birsa Munda’s birthplace Ulihatu in the Khunti district of Jharkhand, a place revered by tribal people across the country, is being viewed as a major tribal outreach programme by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
The visit will be also crucial for Jharkhand which goes to poll next year.
Notably, the Centre has been celebrating Birsa Munda’s birth anniversary on November 15 as ‘Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas’ since 2021 with a view to honour the special place and contributions of tribes in Indian history and culture.
Modi has often said that “Bhagwan Birsa Munda was not just the hero of our freedom struggle but was a carrier of our spiritual and cultural energy.”
Incidentally, Jharkhand as a separate state had been hived off from Bihar on Birsa Munda’s birthday on November 15 in 2000.
According to sources, President Droupadi Murmu, who visited Ulihatu last year, will offer tributes to Birsa Munda at Parliament House in New Delhi.
Though the PM’s official itinerary has not reached the state government, sources said that Modi will address a public meeting where he is supposed to announce various welfare schemes for Adivasis.
The PM’s visit comes at a time when the BJP is struggling to reclaim the tribal support it had once assiduously built in Jharkhand and also in the poll-bound states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Chhattisgarh will go to the polls in two phases– first on November 7 and then on November 17. Polling in Madhya Pradesh will take place on November 17. Rajasthan and Telangana will go to polls on November 23 and 30 respectively.
In all three states, MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, the tribals had deserted the BJP in large numbers in 2018.
In the 90-member Chhattisgarh Assembly, 29 seats are reserved for the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category, which comprises around 32 percent of the State’s population. The ruling Congress won 25 out of 29 ST-reserved seats in the 2018 Assembly polls.
Of the MP’s total 230 seats, there are 47 seats reserved for tribals. In the 2018 polls, the BJP could win only 16 ST seats as compared to the Congress’ 30 seats. In the 2013 polls, the BJP and the Congress won 31 and 15 ST seats respectively.
MP has one of the largest tribal populations in the country, having 46 recognised STs of which three are Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTG) spread across the state. Of its 52 districts, the state has a total of six “fully tribal” districts while another 15 districts are “partially tribal”.
In Rajasthan, 33 of 200 current MLAs are from tribal communities (apart from the 25 reserved seats, tribal MLAs hold eight additional seats). Out of the 33 MLAs, nine belong to the BJP and 17 to the Congress.
In Jharkhand too, the BJP’s loss in the 2019 polls was mainly attributed to the tribal anger against the saffron brigade owing to wrong policy decisions for tribals by the then Raghubar Das government.
Over 26 per cent of Jharkhand’s population is tribal; 28 of its 81 assembly seats are reserved for STs. The JMM- Congress combine grabbed 25 of these seats in 2019.
But then, the BJP has learned from its 2019 defeat. Now, the BJP clearly wants to win back the favour of the Adivasis. It re-inducted former CM Babulal Marandi within two months of its electoral loss in 2019. Former CM Raghubar Das, a non-tribal, has been appointed Odisha governor ostensibly a graceful exit for him from active politics in order to give Marandi a free hand to reclaim the tribal votebase in Jharkhand.
Arjun Munda, presently Union minister of tribal affairs, is said to be the party’s tribal face at the national level.
It is not without reason that the Centre is treading a cautious path in Jharkhand vis a vis Chief Minister Hemant Soren, who has ignored as many as five summons from the ED in the Ranchi land scam.
“Targeting a tribal CM might be a tricky business, and we fear that any coercive action against Soren will anger the tribals in other states too,” pointed out a BJP leader.
