- लिंक मिळवा
- ईमेल
- अन्य अॅप्स
Former Chhatisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi passed away
His death was announced on Twitter by his son Amit Jogi a short while ago.
A former bureaucrat-turned -politician, Ajit Jogi, was the first chief minister of Chhattisgarh after it was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in November 2000.
Jogi lost power in the 2003 Assembly elections but continued to be one of the tallest leaders of the Congress party until he and his son got embroiled in a controversy over a leaked audio tape towards the end of 2015.
The Congress party expelled Mr. Amit Jogi — known to be a power-centre during Jogi's chief ministership — for six years and recommended action against the former Chief Minister after allegations that they 'forced' Manturam Pawar to withdraw his nomination as the Congress party's official candidate in a bye-election.
The Jogis denied the charge and formally quit the Congress in 2016 and floated a regional outfit, Janata Congress Chhattisgarh.
But this was not the only controversy to have surrounded him. Throughout his political career, Jogi faced repeated scrutiny over his claim of being an Adivasi. Several petitions and cases were filed against him and predictably, he legally challenged all of them.
A gold medal winning engineering graduate and a successful IAS officer, Jogi's proximity to the Gandhi family transformed him into seasoned politician.
The story goes that Jogi as the Collector of Raipur in the early 1980s, had struck up a friendship with Rajiv Gandhi who used to operate a regular commercial flight to the city those days.
In 1985, when Rajiv Gandhi took charge as the Prime Minister, Jogi took the formal plunge into politics and rose to become a prominent Adivasi face in the party. A year later, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha and served two consecutive terms.
In 1998, Jogi won the Raigarh Lok Sabha seat and became a spokesperson for the Congress party. In November 2000, when the new State of Chhattisgarh was created, Jogi was chosen by Sonia Gandhi to head the State, pipping veterans such as Moti Lal Vohra and the late Vidya Charan Shukla.
After losing power to the BJP in the State in 2003, he returned to the 14th Lok Sabha as a member of Parliament from the Mahasamund seat. But a near fatal car crash during the 2004 election campaigning left him paralyzed and wheel-chair bound.
In 2008, he went back to his State to successfully contest the Assembly elections from the Marwahi Assembly seat, a reserved constituency. But after Congress failed to wrest back the State from the BJP, he once again became a Lok Sabha member in 2009 but failed to win his seat in 2014.
.........
टिप्पण्या
टिप्पणी पोस्ट करा