Chhattisgarh: Is Congress tie-up with Mayawati-Jogi possible?

New Delhi, Dec 11: The Congress has come a long way since losing its entire state leadership to Naxal attacks in May 2013. In the subsequent years, the Grand Old Party came up with new leaders like Bhupesh Baghel and TS Singh Deo through whose work it put in a lot of political capital in the state which it hasn't ruled after 2003.

The early trends were showing a tug of war between the ruling BJP and Congress in Chhattisgarh, a state which was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000, with the Congress taking a slender lead. The magic figure in the 90-seat Assembly in the state is 46 and in case the party fails to get a clear majority, it will have to fall back on the third party for help and in this case, it is the alliance of Mayawati and Ajit Jogi, a former Congressman and the party's first and only CM of the state so far. While the Bahujan Samaj Party supremo had blasted the Congress ahead of these Assembly polls and scrapped possibilities of any kind of tie-up with it, Ajit Jogi, who now leads the Janta Congress Chhattisgarh, was expelled from the Congress in the past.

So, in case of a hung Assembly, will the Congress and the BSP-JCC alliance join hands to put the BJP at bay? Veteran Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi said in such situations, the third parties will invariably support the Congress and not BJP.

An interesting piece of time is waiting ahead, may be.