THE POLITICS OF THE BASTAR MURDERS

It’s not uncommon in India to see the run-up to an election being marred by violence. But Chhattisgarh, which goes to the polls at the end of the year, is recording a variation on the theme.

- Rahul Noronha

A spate of killings of BJP leaders by left-wing extremists in the forested Bastar region has sparked off a war of words between the ruling Congress and the main opposition party.

Those in the security establishment see the murders as the manifestation of a changed Maoist strategy. But the incidents are bound to impact political activity in this belt. Bastar, with its 12 assembly seats, is crucial for both the BJP and the Congress—more so for the former, which views its road to Raipur as passing through the region.

Sagar Sahu, the BJP’s vice-president for Narayanpur district, was shot dead by two assailants at his house in Chota Dongar on February 10— just a day ahead of BJP national president J.P. Nadda’s visit to Bastar, a fact not without significance. On February 11, Nadda and former chief minister Raman Singh rushed to Sahu’s house to meet the victim’s family. A few hours after Nadda’s visit, Ramdhar Alami, a BJP-aligned former sarpanch, was hacked to death at Barsoor, in Dantewada district. A note was found at the site mentioning Alami as a police informer. A week before Sahu’s murder, local BJP leader Neelkanth Kakem was killed by the Maoists in Bijapur as was Budhram Kartam, a former Bastar district secretary of the party.