NEW DELHI: Buoyed by winning the
Chitrakoot assembly seat in
Madhya Pradesh (MP) in the November 2017 bypoll, the Congress will today be eagerly looking forward to retaining two more seats for which bypolls were held last Saturday.
The results of these two bypolls, for the
Mungaoli and Kolaras assembly seats, will be known later today. Counting of votes began at 8am today.
The two constituencies' results are being seen as an indicator of voters' mood, ahead of Assembly elections in MP later this year. Here are the top things to know about the two seats, the bypolls and why they are being seen as crucial:
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Mungaoli and Kolaras are both currently held by the Congress party, and in both constituencies' bypolls the fight is between the BJP and the Congress.
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The bypoll in Mungaoli was necessitated by the death of sitting Congress MLA Mahendra Singh Kalukheda. The BJP fielded Baisaab Yadav, wife of former MLA Deshraj Singh, against the Congress candidate Brijendra Singh Yadav.
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The
Kolares bypoll was held because sitting Congress lawmaker Ram Singh Yadav died while in office. Here, the Congress has fielded Mahendra Singh Yadav and the BJP has chosen Devendra Jain to contest.
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Both seats fall under the Guna Lok Sabha constituency, the pocket-borough of Congress stalwart Jyotiraditya Scindia.
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For Scindia, retaining both the seats in his home turf is a battle of prestige as he is positioning himself as the chief ministerial candidate of the Congress in the state elections later this year.
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On its part, the BJP has dispatched a string of Cabinet ministers for campaigning while Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has offered various sops to woo voters in the region.
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The Congress, buoyed by its improved performance in last year's Gujarat polls and by retaining the Chitrakoot seat in last November's bypoll, is confident of victory. After all, it retained the seat with an impressive margin of over 14,000 votes.
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Meanwhile, Chouhan, keen to snatch the two seats from the Congress, announced a slew of measures for people of the region, including a Rs 1,000 monthly assistance scheme for tackling malnutrition among Saharia tribals who form a major chunk in Kolaras and Mungaoli.
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