Chhattisgarh: Voting for Khairagarh assembly bypoll on Tuesday

Voting for the bypoll in the Khairagarh assembly constituency in Chhattisgarh will be held on April 12 where the ruling Congress and opposition BJP are locked in a straight fight.

Voting for the bypoll in the Khairagarh assembly constituency in Chhattisgarh will be held on April 12 where the ruling Congress and opposition BJP are locked in a straight fight. A total of 10 candidates are in the fray.

Voting will be held from 7 am till 5 pm amid tight security. The counting of votes will be taken up on April 16. The bypoll was necessitated following the death of JCC (J) legislator and former MP Devvrat Singh last November.

The seat, which falls in the Rajnandgaon district, had witnessed a triangular contest in the 2018 assembly polls when the late Ajit Jogi-led JCC (J) had entered the poll arena. Khaiargarh was among the five seats won by the JCC in the 90-member state assembly.

However, political commentators feel this time the fight is virtually between the ruling Congress and opposition BJP as the JCC (J) has lost its appeal after the demise of Ajit Jogi in 2020. Both the leading parties left no stone unturned in their efforts to woo the voters. While the BJP involved two Union ministers- Prahlad Singh Patel and Faggan Singh Kulaste- and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for campaigning, Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel led the Congress at the hustings. “The BJP's campaign in three assembly bypolls held after the 2018 assembly elections was virtually a low-profile show but the main opposition seemingly put all its might in the Khairagarh bypoll. They know the outcome of the bypoll will not have any impact on the government but the victory could be a booster for the party workers and leaders ahead of next year's general assembly polls,” R Krishna Das, senior journalist and political analyst told PTI.

On the other hand, Congress is also keen on winning the seat where CM Baghel had held multiple rallies. He had promised the people to make Khairagarh a district if Congress wins the seat. In the 2018 assembly polls in Chhattisgarh, the Congress registered a landslide victory winning 68 seats in the 90-member House decimating the BJP to 15. The JCC (J) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had bagged 5 and 2 seats respectively.

One of the Congress MLAs was later elected as an MP.

Subsequently, the state witnessed bypolls to three assembly seats which were won by Congress, improving its tally to 70 in the assembly.

Devvrat Singh, who belonged to the erstwhile royal family of Khairagarh, quit Congress in 2017 and joined JCC (J) the next year. He contested the 2018 assembly polls on the JCC(J) ticket from Khairagarh. He defeated BJP candidate Komal Janghel by a thin margin of 870 votes. This time, the BJP has once again fielded Komal Janghel, a former MLA, for the bypoll, while Yashoda Verma, the Khairagarh block unit chief of Congress, is the ruling party's nominee. Janghel and Verma both belong to the Lodhi caste, a numerically powerful OBC community in the Khairagarh area.

The JCC (J) has fielded Narendra Soni, a lawyer and son-in-law of the erstwhile royal family of Khairagarh. “Both the leading parties focused during the campaign in the Khairagarh's tribal-dominated Salhewara area which has been traditionally supporting the erstwhile royal family of Devvrat Singh,'' Das said.

A Rajnandgaon district poll official said, all the preparations have been done for conducting the by-election. ''As many as 2,11,516 voters- 1,06,266 males and 1,05,250 females - can exercise their franchise, for which 291 polling stations have been set up. Of these, 53 have been recognised as hypersensitive polling booths and 11 as sensitive,'' he said.

All COVID-19 preventive guidelines set by the Election Commission of India (ECI) will be complied with during the voting, the official said.

A total of 22 companies of Central armed police force apart from state police personnel have been deployed to ensure security for the bypoll, he said. One company comprises around 100 personnel.