By Sujeet Kumar, IANS
Raipur : Amit Jogi, the controversial 29-year-old son of Congress leader Ajit Jogi, has settled for a month in an extremely backward village of Chhattisgarh with fishermen and tribals to "experience the difficulties of the common man".
His stay in Tala village has been kept secret here as it is considered part of his move to prepare for a career in public life – in the footsteps of his father, who is a former chief minister.
The village has a population of about 700 – mostly Gond tribals, Kevat fishermen and the Satnami scheduled caste community. Located in Bilaspur district on the banks of Maniari river, it is 150 km from the state capital.
"Amit is a loveable guy but has spent the past fours years amidst controversy. So now he wants to work for poor people and dedicate his life to the cause of rural masses. We all hope his dark phase is over," a source close to the Jogi family told IANS.
"He has been spending his days and nights with Gond tribals and the Kevat community from early this month and will stay with them till end-July as he has never experienced the daily difficulties of rural people," the source added.
In Tala village, where only a few families have cots to sleep on and everyone has to go to an open field to defecate, Amit is roughing it out from 5 a.m. till 12 at night.
"He is learning the Chhattisgarhi language which is a must for communicating with rural voters across the state, cultivating paddy with Gond tribals in the daytime and at night, getting tips from Kevat fishermen on netting fish," the source said.
Amit is often called the "Sanjay Gandhi of Chhattisgarh" as he has always attracted controversy. He was said to be involved in various decisions, including the reshuffle of top administrative officials, and high-profile decisions of the government when his father was chief minister – a rule that ended in December 2003 with a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
He was even embroiled in the sensational case of murder of Nationalist Congress Party leader Ramavtar Jaggi in June 2003 in which the family of the deceased named Amit and his father as prime suspects.
The murder case was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) by the BJP government in January 2004. The investigating agency charge-sheeted several members of his coterie for involvement in the case, with Amit named as "prime conspirator".
But in May this year, a special court acquitted him of murder charges, giving him the benefit of doubt while at least three of his close associates got life imprisonment. Amit had spent about 11 months in the Raipur central jail in the murder case on two occasions.
"Since he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth Aug 7, 1977, in Texas in the United States and studied in St.Stephen's College and JNU in New Delhi, Amit never had a glance at rural India. He wanted to witness the real difficulties and lifestyle of rural people," the family source said.
"It's purely Amit's personal decision to live in a facility-deprived remote village for a month to become aware of the language and culture of impoverished Chhattisgarh," the source said.