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Political experts believe that the promise of a new district and accessibility to the district headquarters along with promised creation of new tehsils in the region has swayed the region to vote for the Congress. After ten rounds of counting for the bypoll to Khairagarh Assembly seat in Chhattisgarh, the Congress candidate is ahead of the BJP by over 12,000 votes. The Janta Congress Chhattisgarh Jogi (JCC (J)) has been left further behind with independent candidates racing ahead of the party.
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.
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.
Sources in the government said that even as the counting is underway, officials have been 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.
However, say political experts, the promise of a new district and the assurance of the creation of new tehsils in the region, has prompted people to vote for the Congress.
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, adding that a Congress win was imminent.
The voter turnout in the bypoll was 77.88 per cent and there will be 21 rounds of counting.
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