With final phase of voting due in Chhattisgarh on November 20, Election With Times travels to Raipur to bring you all you need to know about the polls: What’s at stake, why this election matters and the key issues. BJP has been in power in the state since 2003 and won 10 out of 11 Lok Sabha seats here in 2014. However, elections in Chhattisgarh have always been much closer than they look. In 2013, for example, BJP won 49 of the state assembly seats to Congress’s 39 but the vote share difference between the two parties was only 0.75 per cent. This time, the BJP, campaigning on chief minister Raman Singh’s own unique brand of welfare politics, is facing a resurgent Congress in an election that looks set to go down to the wire. Election With Times, in this episode from Raipur, breaks down the key issues and why they matter to you.In 2013, for example, BJP won 49 of the state assembly seats to Congress’s 39 but the vote share difference between the two parties was only 0.75 percent. This time, BJP, campaigning on chief minister Raman Singh’s own unique brand of welfare politics is facing a resurgent Congress in an election that looks set to go down to the wire.Election With Times, in this episode from Raipur breaks down the key issues and why they matter to you.
Why Chhattisgarh matters: All you need to know
By Nalin Mehta
Nalin Mehta is Managing Editor, Moneycontrol, Chief AI Officer - Editorial Operations, Network18 and Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He is an award-winning Indian journalist, political scientist and author who has held senior leadership positions in major media companies and educational institutions; served as an international civil servant with the UN and the Global Fund in Geneva, Switzerland; taught and held research positions at universities and institutions in Australia (La Trobe University, ANU), Singapore (NUS), Switzerland (International Olympic Museum) and India (Shiv Nadar University, IIM Bangalore). Most recently, he has been Dean and Professor at School of Modern Media, UPES University. He has previously been Group Consulting Editor, Network18; Executive Editor, The Times of India-Online, Managing Editor, India Today (TV channel) and Consulting Editor, The Times of India. Mehta is the author of several best-selling and critically acclaimed books, including The New BJP: Modi and the Making of the World’s Largest Political Party (hailed as a ‘seminal’ work, No. 1 on Amazon’s bestseller lists for 26 consecutive weeks in 2022, and republished worldwide in several languages); India’s Techade: Digital Revolution and Change in the World’s Largest Democracy, India on Television (Asian Publishing Award for Best Book on Asian Media, 2009), Behind a Billion Screens (Longlisted as Business Book of the Year, Tata Literature Live, 2015) and Dreams of a Billion (2022 Ekamra Sports Book of the Year Award, co-authored). His edited books include Gujarat Beyond Gandhi (co-editor), Television in India and The Changing Face of Cricket (co-editor). Mehta is a DFID-Commonwealth scholar with a Ph.D in Political Science from Trobe University, Melbourne; M.A. International Relations from University of East Anglia, UK; and B.A. Journalism (Honours) from University of Delhi.
