Ajit Jogi: One life, many accomplishments | Obituary

Chhattisgarh's first CM Ajit Jogi passed away due to prolonged illness on Friday. He was 74.

In the 1950s, a young boy of around 10 years of age came to Raipur from his native Pendra Road town by train. He roamed the town’s streets on his father’s shoulders before he took him to a public meeting to be addressed by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

A decade later, the young boy, by then a gold medalist mechanical engineer, had started working at the town’s engineering college as a lecturer and covered the streets of the city on his bicycle.

At the age of 22, he qualified for the IPS and two years later cracked the Union Public Service Commissioner (UPSC) to join the IAS in his home state Madhya Pradesh, where he was the topper in his batch.

Around 1980, the youngster returned to Raipur, this time as the district magistrate of the politically and economically crucial district, his ride being the white ambassador - considered an accouterment of power in India. Twenty years later, he was back in Raipur - as the first chief minister of the newly created state of Chhattisgarh. A fleet of white ambassadors awaited his arrival.

If Ajit Pramod Kumar Jogi had lived the same life in South India, and had his fate inextricably linked to one town, he would have been the subject of a major movie.

Born on April 29, 1946, at Gaurela in modern-day Marwahi district in Chhattisgarh to school teacher Kashi Prasad Jogi and Kanti Mani, Ajit Jogi was a gold medalist in mechanical engineering from National Institute of Technology, Bhopal, then a regional engineering college called the Maulana Azad College of Technology (MACT).

Jogi was also college president and even though his scheduled tribe certificate was always a subject of controversy, qualified in every exam on merit, without any reservation, be it the IAS or engineering college admission.

While in the IAS, Jogi was appointed as the collector of Sidhi, a district in eastern MP despite having served only three years in service. Sidhi was and still is affected by Brahmin vs Thakur politics. Brahmin and Thakur collectors had been tried there but had failed because they were seen as partisan.

Jogi was chosen to go there by then CM Prakash Chandra Sethi because he was neither. Jogi proved to be an adept collector and went on to serve in four districts eventually, Sidhi, Shahdol, Raipur and Indore. The last assignment, Indore, was considered the cherry on the cake for successful bureaucrats in Madhya Pradesh.

He notched another record for himself, to have served as collector for 13 out of the 16 years an IAS officer stays in the grade to serve as a collector. Once he was assigned a district, he never returned to the state capital in any capacity, moving from one field assignment to the other.

As an IAS, he was considered a bright officer, who could grasp issues quickly, advise his political masters accurately and was regarded an authority on rules and regulations. He was said to have a photographic memory and could quote sections of acts at will. His court work was considered worthy of emulating by his juniors.

While in Sidhi, Ajit Jogi came in touch with Arjun Singh, the Congress stalwart who was to become his mentor in politics. The two parted ways later but Jogi always regarded him as his well-wisher.

Arjun Singh became the chief minister in 1980 and this was when Jogi was sent as Raipur and then later to Indore as the collector. Arjun Singh would also introduce him to Rajiv Gandhi who also took a liking to Jogi.

It was at Rajiv Gandhi’s behest, Ajit Jogi quit the IAS and in 1986 was sent to the Rajya Sabha on a Congress ticket at the age of 40. He served two terms in the Upper House, securing a second nomination during Narsimha Rao’s prime ministership in 1992. Jogi spent most of his time in Delhi, getting to know top leaders.

In 1998, he contested the Lok Sabha elections from Raigarh, an ST-reserved constituency. This was the first time he would use his ST certificate and won the election. In 1999, he contested the LS elections again, from Shahdol and lost.

A Congress government was in place in Madhya Pradesh with Digvijaya Singh as CM. Digvijaya Singh had also been a protégé of late Arjun Singh and Ajit Jogi began maneuvering for the chief minister’s post.

He raised the demand for a tribal chief minister in MP to which Digvijaya Singh responded by having his loyalists question Ajit Jogi’s tribal credentials.

In the summer of 2000, Ajit Jogi suffered a personal tragedy, his daughter Anusha committed suicide in Indore. The same year, Chhattisgarh was carved out of MP as a separate state. Ajit Jogi did not have a sizable number of MLAs with him. Most of them owed allegiance to Digvijaya Singh while some others aligned with the Shukla brothers, Shyama Charan and Vidya Charan.

Sonia Gandhi, who had by then a firm grip on party affairs, insisted on appointing Ajit Jogi as the chief minister. Digvijaya Singh, much against his wishes, loyally agreed with the Congress president and had Ajit Jogi elected the CLP leader.

Ajit Jogi had by then never held any political office. This is often held as a disqualification for many politicians when they are in the running for top jobs. But this wasn’t even sighted as an issue because Ajit Jogi had immense experience in the permanent executive. And as expected, he slid into the role very easily.

Those who witnessed the early days of Chhattisgarh state recall Jogi’s complete grip on affairs. Most politicians in India regard the bureaucracy as the main impediment in pushing their agenda while in office. In fact, one of the biggest reasons for even the most adept politicians to not succeed while in the office is the inability to understand the administrative side of their work. Many civil servants also run foul of their political bosses because they fail to grasp the political aspect of administrative decisions.

Ajit Jogi had a unique position that way and was an outlier. he understood the politics in administration and the administration in politics. Chhattisgarh back then was known to be run like a state headed by a chief secretary and his collectors except of course the CS was the CM.

Jogi centralised decision making as CM so much so that ministers had little work to do. He ran the state through the bureaucracy but the elections in November 2003 proved to be a setback for him.

Vidya Charan Shukla who had been denied the CM ship of the state had joined Sharad Pawar’s NCP. He fielded candidates in all 90 seats and won only one but damaged Congress at many seats. In a closely contested election, the Congress was out of power. It remained so till 2018 when it made a comeback under Bhupesh Baghel, a minister at one time in Jogi’s cabinet. Baghel and Jogi had a fallout and then Congress president Rahul Gandhi supported Baghel. Jogi would never return as the chief minister of the state.

Controversy followed Ajit Jogi all his political life. As CM, he was accused of giving too much leeway to his son Amit, who became a power centre. He was then embroiled in a case questioning his tribal identity.

Jogi had immense popularity in the Satnami community, a politically powerful SC group in Chhattisgarh. It was Jogi who had advised Arjun Singh to give prominence to the Satnamis to cultivate them as a political group. They loved him and stood by him mostly. Jogi’s detractors claimed Jogi was from the Satnami community and not a Kanwar tribal, as claimed by him. Every political formation, opposed to Jogi, raked up his caste identity whenever it was convenient but Jogi managed to get relief from the judiciary each time.

His son Amit was named in the Jaggi murder case that happened while Jogi was CM. Soon after the elections, a phone recording was made public in which Ajit Jogi was heard telling a BJP MLA that he could cross over to the Congress. He also named then Congress President Sonia Gandhi in the conversation.

Jogi was suspended by the Congress and remained out of the party for a couple of years before he was brought back.

During his tenure as the CM, a sting operation showing BJP’s Dilip Singh Judeo accepting wads of currency notes in a hotel came to the fore. Sting operations were new in the political landscape and Amit’s name surfaced in that too. The matter was investigated by the CBI and eventually closed. But by then Jogi had acquired a Machiavellian reputation.

In 2013, a large number of Congress leaders, including Nandkumar Patel, Mahendra Karma and Vidya Charan Shukla were killed in the Darbha Ghati Maoist attack. Jogi’s detractors fuelled a conspiracy theory that Jogi’s absence at Darbha should be investigated.

Ajit Jogi was also known to enjoy very cordial relations with BJP CM Raman Singh. The anti-Jogi camp claimed Raman Singh and Jogi would use each other to take on rivals within their respective parties.

As CM Ajit Jogi experimented with a new political alliance in the state. He attempted to marginalise the rajas- who have always been important politically in the state - and tried to stitch up a Brahmin-SC alliance. One cannot say with certainty how successful the alliance was.

Even after getting him back, the Congress had in true Congress style begun keeping Ajit Jogi in check. General secretaries opposed to him were appointed in charge of the state and in 2008 and 2013 he was accused of sabotaging the Congress prospects in the state.

In 2015, his son Amit was accused of malpractices damaging the Congress prospects during the Antagarh by-election.

In 2016, Jogi - after appealing to the Congress high command - parted ways with the Congress and floated the Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (JCC).

He had a tie-up with the BSP for the 2018 assembly elections. The calculation Jogi had for the elections was that given Chhattisgarh’s history of having elections where the vote share difference between the winner and loser parties is not much, if he could position his outfit in between and secure 10-15 seats, he would emerge as the kingmaker.

Jogi’s alliance didn’t do too badly, winning seven seats and polling 14 per cent of the vote. The only problem was that his bête noire Bhupesh Baghel led the Congress to a landslide victory rendering any other party inconsequential.

The JCC did not even contest the LS elections, fueling the speculation that it wants to merge with the Congress - a possibility that is still doing the rounds in the state.

"Interestingly, Ajit Jogi’s popularity as a bureaucrat was much more than what even many politicians can never aspire to achieve. He brought in a new form of politics to Chhattisgarh, one that invoked Chhattisgarh pride and subnationalism. His brand of politics was different from what was practiced in the parent state of Madhya Pradesh. Jogi forced this change and what is witnessed in Chhattisgarh with incumbent CM Bhupesh Baghel also practicing the same form of politics, is Jogi’s doing,” said veteran journalist Girija Shankar.

A car crash in 2004, while he was campaigning in the Lok Sabha elections in Mahasamund, had left Ajit Jogi paralysed waist downwards. Jogi had volunteered to contest against Vidya Charan Shukla who had by then joined the BJP and was the party candidate in his family pocket borough of Mahasamund. It was seen as a contest to settle political scores with Shukla, who Jogi had held responsible for his 2003 assembly elections defeat. Even after the near-fatal accident, Jogi won the election. Shukla too returned to the Congress after a few years.

It was by a combination of yoga and physiotherapy and most importantly by sheer strength of his will power that Jogi kept himself physically active for close to 16 years, thereby keeping himself relevant in the state’s politics. He was unlike regular politicians and was a voracious reader, his library stacked with books, recent and old both. Ajit Jogi was working on his autobiography when he passed away. His book would not be less interesting than the life he led.