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Identity Crisis
The question
of Ajit Jogi's tribal status continues to spark a row decades after it
was first raised. INDIA TODAY's Special Correspondent Neeraj Mishra finds
out why.
The ST certificate issued to Ajit Pramod
Kumar Jogi by the Naib Tehsildar of Pendra Road in 1967 probably has stubborn
spots on it like the one on Lady Macbeth's hands. Even after three elections,
two terms in the Rajya Sabha and one year as chief minister of Chhattisgarh,
they don't seem to be going away. Twice the high courts have rejected
claims that Jogi is not a tribal. Yet National Commission for Schedule
Castes and Schedule Tribes (NCSCST) Chairman Dilip Singh Bhuria has rejected
the verdicts of the court and declared that Jogi has been "using
the certificate fraudulently and is actually a Schedule Caste who is not
authorised to use even that status by reason of his forefathers having
converted to Christianity".
Bhuria issued a directive on October 16 asking the chief secretary of
Chhatisgarh to explain the position of the state Government within 30
days. But the Bilaspur High Court on October 22 asked Bhuria to explain
his position vis-a-vis the decision which Jogi has challenged as patently
illegal and without jurisdiction. In a writ before the court, Jogi has
submitted that two cases relating to his tribal status had been filed
before the Madhya Pradesh High Court in Jabalpur and Indore and had been
rejected and, according to its own charter, the NCSCST could not take
up cases which have earlier been decided by the courts. In a July 1987
order, the Indore bench of the Jabalpur High Court had decided the case
in favour of Jogi and rejected the public interest litigation as baseless.
Later, another petition was filed in the Jabalpur High Court in 2001.
This April, the court again rejected it and even penalised the petitioner
for raising issues which had already been decided.
The latest case has been taken to the NCSCST by one Sant Kumar Netam who
had sought to impugn Jogi's election from Marwahi which is an ST seat.
The commission arrived at its conclusion after thorough research and is
satisfied with its findings that Jogi is indeed not a tribal but a Satnami.
Says Bhuria: "Jogi's father was a Satnami and was a school teacher
in Pendra Road. He had a tribal wife but he had converted to Christianity.
In any case it is the father's caste which is applicable in the case of
children, making Jogi an SC.'' Jogi on the other hand says, "The
commission has no right to decide and its findings are politically motivated.
When the courts have settled the matter once and for all and have accepted
that I belong to the Kanwar tribe, I don't understand how the commission
can take up the case.''
Jogi's claims, however, have been weakened by the father of one of his
own cabinet colleagues. Nand Kumar Baghel, a close associate of Jogi and
father of PHE Minister Bhupesh Baghel, in his book Ravan Ko Mat Maro,
claims that Jogi is a bhumiputra and son of a Satnami father. The book
has been banned by the Chhatisgarh Government.
The question of Jogi's tribal status has been the subject of debate on
other occassions as well. In 1988, it had been raised surreptitiously
by his own partymen after his nomination to the Rajya Sabha by Arjun Singh.
His entry was being resisted by the tribal lobby in Madhya Pradesh and
though it was put on the backburner for six years after the Indore bench's
decision, the matter surfaced again in 1995.
This time it was Chief Minister Digvijay Singh who was trying to prove
that Jogi was not a tribal. For Jogi, who was spearheading a campaign
for a tribal chief minister, Digvijay had long been his nemesis. Aligning
with tribal power houses Arvind Netam and Pyarelal Kanwar to luanch a
campaign against Jogi's tribal status, Digvijay managed a petition signed
by 66 MLAs of the CLP, including all tribal MLAs, and presented it to
then Congress president P.V. Narasimha Rao, stating that Jogi was not
a tribal. Alongwith the petition was a family tree proving that Jogi was
a Satnami.
The matter came up for appraisal again during the 1999 general elections
which Jogi lost from the ST seat of Shahdol as it did in August 2000 as
well just before the formation of Chhatisgarh. Netam was distributing
the same set of documents to anyone who would listen to him. It was an
attempt to run Jogi out of the chief ministerial race as a tribal candidate.
Perceived as Sonia Gandhi's blue-eyed boy, Jogi, observers say, has been
constantly run down by other Congressmen. Even now it is believed that
Netam is only a front and there are bigger forces at work to discredit
Jogi.
For the Opposition BJP, the case is of special significance. "If
Jogi is a tribal, then he should make public his family tree. It should
be published in every newspaper through advertisements, " challenges
senior BJP MLA Brijmohan Agarwal. Bhuria says the commission is willing
to take it right up to the Supreme Court. If the court finds that Jogi
has indeed been misusing the certificate, then the blame will be more
on Sonia Gandhi. She had promoted Jogi openly as a tribal leader making
him the first chief minister of a tribal state. But till then, the battle
will be fought on the ground.
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