Amit Jogi

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Amit Jogi is the son of Indian politician Ajit Jogi who was first Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh. He studied at the St. Stephen's College, Delhi and the Jawaharlal Nehru University. His detractors- both from his father's party Congress as well as the opposition BJP- see him as an incarnation of Sanjay Gandhi who was reputed to have been the high-handed extra-constitutional authority during the Emergency. Amit Jogi handled behind the scene politics during tenure of his father as Chief Minister of Chattisgarh. Amit allegedly masterminded the first- and only- full-scale vertical split of the BJP in Chhattisgarh when 12 MLAs joined the Congress party during his father's chief ministership. Amit's alleged role in causing the dramatic defection of Leader of Opposition's daughter right in the middle of a BJP national convention presided by the then PM AB Vajpayee was seen directly as an attempt to humiliate him. Needless to say this evoked the BJP's ire. A systematic propaganda campaign was orchestrated particularly in the state's urban areas and through the media to portray him as power-hungry and corrupt. However Amit- the man at the centre of the storm- remained stoically silent. He came under the gaze of the national media when top leaders of the BJP accused him of being behind the Dilip Singh Judeo expose in the Indian Express newspaper during Chhattisgarh's assembly election in 2003. Less than a month later another he and his father were accused of trying to buy BJP MLAs to destabilize the newly-formed Raman Singh government. Since then Amit had been keeping a low-profile before the CBI arrested him for allegedly conspiring to murder Ram Avtar Jaggi, who was shot dead in June 2003 at Raipur. After having spent ten months in Raipur Central Jail, he was granted bail recently.