9 Assembly seats where BJP yet to taste victory since formation of Chhattisgarh

RAIPUR: The BJP has governed Chhattisgarh for 15 years but it has never been able to register a win in a cluster of nine constituencies ever since the state was formed in 2000. Hoping to buck the trend, the party has roped in new faces for six of these seats this time.

Chhattisgarh will vote in two phases on November 7 and 17.

Of these nine seats, Sitapur, Pali-Tanakhar, Marwahi, Mohla-Manpur and Konta are reserved for the Scheduled Tribe category, while the remaining four Kharsia, Korba, Kota and Jaijaipur are general constituencies.

After Chhattisgarh was carved out of Madhya Pradesh, the BJP won three consecutive assembly elections in the state in 2003, 2008 and 2013, bagging 50, 50 and 49 seats, respectively. In 2018, the Congress stopped the march of the Raman Singh government by winning 68 seats in the 90-member assembly. BJP’s tally plunged to 15.

“BJP has given special focus on the selection of candidates for those seats it has never won. All candidates have been campaigning in their respective areas with full enthusiasm and receiving huge support from the people”, BJP MP and convener of the party’s election campaign committee Santosh Pandey said.

State’s Industry minister Kawasi Lakhma, an influential Congress tribal leader from Bastar region and five-term MLA, has remained unbeaten since 1998 in the Naxal-hit Konta seat.

BJP has fielded a fresh face Soyam Mukka, a former activist of the anti-Maoist civil militia Salwa Judum which was disbanded in 2011.

This seat has mostly seen a triangular contest between Congress, BJP and Communist Party of India (CPI). In the 2018 assembly polls, Lakhma bagged 31,933 votes while BJP’s Dhaniram Barse and CPI’s Manish

Kunjam polled 25,224 votes and 24,549 votes, respectively.