Voting for as many as 7 seats in the final leg of Lok Sabha elections in Chhattisgarh has commenced. A total of 168 candidates are contesting the Lok Sabha elections from Korba, Raipur, Durg, Bilaspur, Raigarh, Janjgir-Champa and Surguja constituency of the State under the final phase of the 18th Lok Sabha.
Earlier, as many as 3 Lok Sabha constituencies of the State underwent polls in the first and second phase of the Lok Sabha elections on April 19 and 25 respectively.
The Maoist affected constituency of Bastar was first to undergo polls on April 19 which followed voting in Kanker, Mahasamund and high-profile seat of Rajnandgaon on April 25.
All four constituencies witnessed a significant turnout of the with an all time high turnout was recorded in the Maoist-hit Bastar constituency. Further, an overall turnout of over 74% was recorded in the second phase of elections.
Heightened Security
The voting on all seven remaining Lok Sabha seats is underway amidst tightened security. According to the information available, a total of 60000 police personnel and 202 companies of central forces are deployed in separate Lok Sabha constituencies to ensure smooth and peaceful elections.
Briefing the media about the preparation, State Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Reena Babasaheb Kangale on Monday said that ” all the preparation have been completed for conducting polling in all the remaining Lok Sabha constituencies in the State in the third phase on May 7.
A total of 168 candidates including 26 women are in the fray where 1,39,01,285 voters including 69,67544 women voters will cast their votes. The voters of the third gender who are eligible to cast their votes are 620, she added.
उत्साहित मतदाता ✨ #InkWaliSelfie#GeneralElections2024 के #Phase3 में विशेष पीवीटीजी बाहुल्य मतदान केंद्र मरेया में, मतदाता मतदान करने उमंग के साथ पहुंच रहे हैं। #YouAreTheOne
Credit 📷 @CEOChhattisgarh#ChunavKaParv #DeshKaGarv #ECI #LokSabhaElections2024#Elections2024 pic.twitter.com/SSyBFDAvzF
— Election Commission of India (@ECISVEEP) May 7, 2024
She further informed that a total of 15701 polling booths, including 2809 Snagawari booths (managed by women personnel), 306 Aadarsh booths, have been set up across the State. 25 polling booths have been categorised as vulnerable while a total of 1072 booths are categorised as critical, said Kangale.
Main Contest between the BJP and Congress
In almost all of the Lok Sabha seats of the State the main contest lies between the candidates of the India National Congress (INC) and the Bhartaiya Janata Party (BJP).
In the high-profile seat of Raipur, the main contest lies between the INC’s candidate Vikas upadhyay who is locking horns with BJP stalwart and State minister, Brijmohan Agarwal.
— Chief Electoral Officer, Chhattisgarh (@CEOChhattisgarh) May 7, 2024
In Korba, another seat where heavyweights of both the parties are up against each other the BJP has fielded former Member of Parliament (MP), Saroj Pandey against the incumbent Congress MP, Jyotshana Mahant, wife of Charandas Mahant, leader of the opposition in the State assembly.
Kamlesh Jangade of the BJP is locking horns with the INC’s candidate Shiv Kumar Dahariya from Janjgir Champa Lok Sabha seat, the only reserved constituency for the Scheduled Caste (SC) in the final phase of elections in the State.
Meanwhile in the Scheduled Tribes (ST) reserved seats of Surguja the BJP has fielded Chintamani Maharaj, a former leader of the Congress party who defected from the INC months before the polls. Maharaj will be up against the debutant Shashi Singh of the INC.
In Raigarh another ST reserved seat of the State the main contest lies between the BJP’s Radheshyam Rathiya and the INC’s candidate Menka Devi Singh, a scion of the royal family of Sarangarh. In the judicial capital of the State, Bilaspur, INC’s candidate and incumbent MLA Devendra Yadav is up against the BJP’s former MLA Tokhan Sahu.
It is noteworthy that the politics of the tribal dominated State of Chhattisgarh revolves mainly around issues pertaining to illegal conversion, tribal upliftment and Maoist insurgency where the BJP while promising a stringent anti-conversion law, action against corruption and Maoist had made a grand return to the power in the State assembly election held in November last year.
