Chhattisgarh: With new district promise, Cong wins Khairagarh by margin of 20,000 votes

By noon, celebrations began at the Congress office in Raipur with the party candidate Yashoda Verma maintaining a lead from the first round of counting. She got 87,640 votes while the BJP’s Komal Janghel got 67,481 votes. The Janta Congress Chhattisgarh Jogi (JCC(J)) candidate got only 1,218 votes.

Bypoll to Khairagarh — that falls in the Naxal-affected Rajnandgaon district — was necessitated after the death of sitting JCC(J) MLA Devvrat Singh, who belonged to the royal family in Khairagarh. The JCC (J) had given a ticket to his brother-in-law for the bypolls, hoping to gain votes from the sympathy for Singh.

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The Congress candidate Yashoda Verma and the BJP’s Komal Janghel are from the OBC community that is numerically strong in the region. In the 2018 Assembly elections, Janghel lost by a slim margin of 850 votes.

The bypoll was held on April 12.

In the run-up to the polls, the Congress had released a manifesto for the constituency, with Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel promising to make Khairagarh-Chhuikhadan-Gandai a new district if the Congress candidate was elected.

After winning, Verma thanked voters, CM Baghel and Congress state president Mohan Markam. “Bhupesh hai to bharosa hai (There’s trust because of Bhupesh). We were sure of winning from the beginning. People have seen how much work this government has been doing. We will now create a new district too,” she said.

Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel also thanked voters. “It is clear now, the state has spoken up for strengthened rural economy. We have fulfilled all our promises from 2018 and that has helped us… It will help us in the upcoming Assembly elections as well,” Baghel told the media.

खैरागढ़ की जनता ने आज फिर से भरोसा जताया कि कांग्रेस ही है जो कहती है, वह करती है।

श्रीमती यशोदा वर्मा जी को छत्तीसगढ़ में कांग्रेस के 71 वें विधायक के रूप में चुने जाने पर बधाई।

हमारे एक एक कार्यकर्ता की मेहनत के बिना यह संभव नहीं था। 1/2

— Bhupesh Baghel (@bhupeshbaghel) April 16, 2022

Sources in the government said that even as the counting was underway, officials in revenue department were asked to report to duty on Sunday to start work on the creation of the new district.

Khairagarh is an important seat for the BJP as well, with former chief minister and senior BJP leader Raman Singh hailing from the region. Singh, along with Cabinet minister Prahlad Patel and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, campaigned in the constituency regularly. Aiming to consolidate urban votes in the constituency, the BJP’s campaign focussed on the lack of basic infrastructure in the area. They also attacked the Baghel-led Congress government over farmers’ strike and claimed lack of development in the region.

Former CM Raman Singh said, “We accept the of the people, but this election was swayed by the promise of making a new district. They have no proof of work; no work has happened in the constituency. Now the state government has made more promises. The government should be ready to declare all 90 seats as separate districts if it hopes to win the next election.”

Countering Singh, CM Baghel quipped, “The BJP created new districts before the 2018 elections but they still lost in most of them.”

The Khairagarh bypoll, the third bypoll in three years, is also being seen as a report card for the ruling Congress before the Assembly elections in 2023. “It is because of the government’s schemes and work on the ground that the results are in our favour,” said state Cabinet minister Amarjeet Bhagat in a press briefing.

77.88% voters had cast their vote and there were 21 rounds of counting.