Rajnandgaon: Voting began Tuesday amid tight security for the bypoll to Khairagarh Assembly seat in Chhattisgarh’s Naxal-affected Rajnandgaon district.
The bypoll was necessitated following the death of Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J) legislator and former MP Devvrat Singh last November.
A total of 10 candidates are in the fray.
“Polling began at 7 am and it will be held till 5 pm,” a poll official here said.
“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.
The counting of votes will be taken up April 16.
The official said 22 companies (each comprises around 100 personnel) of the Central Armed Police Force and state police personnel have been deployed for patrolling around Khairagarh, where the area bordering with Madhya Pradesh is considered as Naxal-affected.
The seat had witnessed a triangular contest in the 2018 Assembly polls when the JCC (J), then led by former state chief minister Ajit Jogi, had entered the poll arena. Khaiargarh was among the five seats won by the JCC(J) in the 90-member state Assembly.
Political experts feel this time the fight is mainly between the ruling Congress and opposition BJP in the state, as the JCC (J) has lost its appeal after the demise of Ajit Jogi in 2020.
Devvrat Singh, who belonged to the erstwhile royal family of Khairagarh, quit the Congress in 2017 and joined JCC (J) the next year. He contested the 2018 assembly polls on the JCC(J) ticket from Khairagarh and defeated BJP candidate Komal Janghel by a thin margin of 870 votes.
This time, the BJP has again fielded Komal Janghel, a former MLA, while Yashoda Verma, the Khairagarh block unit chief of Congress, is the ruling party’s nominee. Both Janghel and Verma belong to the Lodhi caste, a numerically powerful OBC community in the Khairagarh area.
The JCC (J) has fielded Narendra Soni, a lawyer and member of the erstwhile royal family of Khairagarh.
The Congress has promised the people to make Khairagarh a district if it wins the seat, which was once its bastion.
Both the leading parties left no stone unturned in their efforts to woo the voters. While the BJP deputed 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 during the party’s campaining.
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 seats.
The JCC (J) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had bagged 5 and 2 seats, respectively.
Subsequently, the state witnessed bypolls to three Assembly seats which were won by Congress, improving its tally to 70 in the Assembly.
