Chhattisgarh will turn 18 on November 1, the minimum age for an Indian to vote. Many first-time voters in the State hope that the Assembly election this time will throw up a new face as Chief Minister.

The four elections held so far in the State have led to a Congress government for the first three years and a BJP dispensation for the next 15. The State has had just two Chief Ministers: Ajit Jogi, then in the Congress, and Raman Singh of the BJP. Reason enough for youngsters to aspire for change. The political churning in the State gives them hope, as a three-cornered fight takes place as against the usual direct Congress-BJP fight.

“In every State, political parties’ fortunes change with every election. It is good for common people like us to have power change hands; so that there is accountability,” Shirin Ashma, a first year B.Com. student in Raipur, says.

There are 1.18 lakh new voters aged 18 or 19, constituting nearly 0.7% of the electorate — the difference in vote share between the BJP and the Congress in 2013.

The four previous elections recorded a razor-thin difference in vote share between the two parties. Since 2003, the difference has been less than 2.5%. In 2013, it narrowed down to a tantalising 0.75%. The electoral unpredictability in the State is such that in 2013, the Congress almost took off on a victory procession, but by afternoon, its fortunes started turning. Five years down the line, an alliance of the Janta Congress Chhattisgarh, led by Mr. Jogi, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Communist Party of India makes it a triangular fight.

Chhattisgarh’s politics is much different from the currents elsewhere in the country. Though a majority of the voters are Hindu, the State is insulated from the traditional pulls and pressures of religion. Several hundred local cults are followed by the tribal people and others, giving little chance to draw communal binaries.

The BJP is betting on 32 welfare measures announced by Chief Minister Raman Singh over the past 15 years. The latest is free mobile phones for 50 lakh rural households, urban poor and college students under the Sanchar Kranti Yojana. In the past six months, the State has accelerated construction under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, which provides ₹1.2 lakh to a beneficiary to build a 25-sq.m pucca house.

“Raman Singh has given us a pucca house. What more do we want,” said Ashwini Kumar Sahu from Dewada village in the Chief Minister’s constituency of Rajnandgaon. Mr. Sahu built a two-room house.

Farm factor

But the government has to contend with disgruntlement among paddy farmers after repeatedly failing to pay the minimum support price of ₹2,100 a quintal promised by the BJP in the previous election. “Every day, a new flag is raised,” says Omkar Chandrakar in the Kasdol constituency, some 100 km from Raipur.

The BJP has launched Mission 65 to win 65 of the 90 seats and 51% of the vote. The Congress after having failed to seal an alliance with the BSP is banking on raising corruption as the key election issue. It’s anxious after the entry of Mr. Jogi’s party and his deft move to tie up with the BSP and the CPI. “We are not going to be king-makers, we are here to seat people on the throne,” his son Amit Jogi says.

In 2013, the BJP won nine of the 10 reserved seats which the Congress had held. The Congress is hoping that Ajit Jogi-Mayawati combine will cut into the BJP vote share in these seats. The BJP is confident of a repeat of last time, when the newly formed Satnami Sena (Satnami sect is the largest Dalit group in the State) ate into Congress vote bank among Dalits.

The tribes hold the key with 30.6% of the population and 29 reserved seats. In the 18 seats, most of them naxal affected, in the first phase, the Raman Singh government has managed to make a difference with smooth highways, but many of his schemes are yet to reach the interiors. The Congress continues to have a pull here.

Ultimately, the Chattisgarh question boils down to who exactly will the Jogi alliance harm. The BJP or the Congress? Either way, the State is headed for a thriller.