BJP sweeps tribal seats across M.P., Chhattisgarh with 3-pronged plan Jubilant: BJP workers celebrating in Raipur after the Chhattisgarh results on Sunday. R.V. Moorthy Party’s courting of the tribal vote was led by PM Narendra Modi and rested on key planks — representation, stressing the appointment of the first-ever tribal President, and maintaining tribal culture to counter the religious conversion narrative

BJP sweeps tribal seats across M.P., Chhattisgarh with 3-pronged plan Jubilant: BJP workers celebrating in Raipur after the Chhattisgarh results on Sunday. R.V. Moorthy Party’s courting of the tribal vote was led by PM Narendra Modi and rested on key planks — representation, stressing the appointment of the first-ever tribal President, and maintaining tribal culture to counter the religious conversion narrative ABHINAY LAKSHMAN NEW DELHI Across Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, which account for 31% of the country’s tribal population, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the Assembly elections. The party, which won just 19 of the 76 ST seats in M.P. and Chhattisgarh in 2018, managed to bag 44 this year — most of the added victories came by converting Congress-voting constituencies. In Rajasthan, the BJP managed to add four more ST seats to its tally compared to 2018, even as new entrant Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP) capitalised on changing ideas of tribal identity with its “alternate politics”, which leaders insisted won it three seats in Rajasthan (Dhariawad, Aspur, and Chorasi) and one in M.P. (Sailana). Winning hearts The BJP’s courting of the tribal vote in these Assembly elections was led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and rested on three key planks: representation, stressing the appointment of the first-ever tribal President and tribal Cabinet members, and maintaining the tribal culture to counter the narrative of religious conversion, which played into the third plank of building a nationalistic tribal identity by emphasising the Centre’s efforts to recognise tribal freedom fighters and their struggles. And the final boost was Mr. Modi launching a ₹24,000-crore plan to take existing schemes to Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTG) in the last days of campaigning. While this plan seems to have paid off in Chhattisgarh (BJP won 17 of 29 ST seats), Madhya Pradesh (27 of 47 ST seats), and to some extent in Rajasthan, the party’s drive to woo tribal voters using the same strategy found little to no support in Telangana, where nine of the 12 ST seats were won by the Congress, and the rest by the BRS. The BJP’s decision to field Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Renuka Singh Saruta, an Adivasi herself, in Chhattisgarh as part of its representation plank paid off as well, with Ms. Saruta winning the Bharatpur-Sonhat seat by a margin of nearly 5,000 votes, and ending the day as one of the BJP’s CM-hopefuls. The Congress, on the one hand, alienated tribal voters in Chhattisgarh with its pitch for Other Backward Classes, often focusing its campaign efforts towards this even in ST seats, said Raipur-based social activist Alok Shukla. On the other hand, the same pitch failed to consolidate OBC voters because of a dominance of the Kurmi community, to which outgoing CM Bhupesh Baghel belongs, further pushing the Sahus — another dominant OBC community — towards the BJP. “Mr. Baghel kept drumming up the Chhattisgarhiya identity but what about the Surgujiya identity or the Bastariya identity of the Adivasi people?” Mr. Shukla said. Feeling the pulse In both Surguja and Bastar belts, where a majority of Chhattisgarh’s ST seats lie, the Congress took a beating from the BJP — losing almost all ST seats in Surguja and all but four in Bastar. In constituencies like Narayanpur (Bastar), Christian tribals were upset with the Congress for not acting on rising attacks against them even as the BJP made it a point to mention religious conversion by missionaries as a campaign plank. The seat went to the BJP’s Kedar Kashyap, who won by over 19,000 votes. Similarly, the BJP added at least 19 ST seats to its tally in M.P., with tribal seats in the Mahakaushal and Malwa-Nimar regions — like Ghoradongri, Bhainsdehi, Mandla, Alirajpur, etc. — shifting from the Congress to the BJP. The ‘Hinduisation’ of Adivasis in Chhattisgarh and M.P. is another factor that contributed to the tribal vote shifting to the BJP, with leaders of the Sangh parivar’s Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram crediting their on-ground efforts for bringing Adivasis into the Hindu fold by making inroads into tribal communities. “The Congress’s rhetoric of semantics between ‘Adivasi’ and ‘Vanvasi’ was clearly not enough. You cannot have a leader like Rahul Gandhi promise tribals in Surguja to save their lands from mining interests and then have the same party’s government put a law like PESA on hold,” Mr. Shukla said.