Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s hopes are pinned on the old leaders to ensure victory in next month’s assembly elections in Chhattisgarh. The party has given tickets to 11 sitting MLAs. At the same time, 13 leaders who lost in the 2018 elections have been fielded again. The Election Commission has announced the dates of assembly elections for Chhattisgarh and four other states. A few hours after the announcement of the dates, BJP on Monday released its second list of candidates for 64 assembly seats.
Voting will be held in two phases on November 7 (20 seats) and November 17 (70 seats) to elect the new 90-member assembly in the Naxal-hit state. With this, BJP has so far announced candidates for 85 seats and the names of only five candidates are yet to be declared. Former Chief Minister Raman Singh will contest from his traditional Rajnandgaon seat, while Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Narayan Prasad Chandel has been re-nominated from his current seat Zanjeer-Champa.
Popular Chhattisgarhi film star Anuj Sharma, who recently joined BJP, has been fielded from Dharsiwa in Raipur district. The son of a villager, Ishwar Sahu, who was killed in a communal clash in Biranpur village of Bemetara district in April this year, also has his name in the list of candidates. The state opposition party has refused to give ticket to sitting MLA Damrudhar Pujari (Bindarnavgarh-ST reserved). MLA Dharamjit Singh, who recently joined BJP after being expelled from Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J) last year, has been fielded from Takhatpur seat.
Three MPs and two former IAS officers, including a Union minister, are also included in the BJP list, which also has over 20 new faces and names of nine women candidates. Of the 64 seats for which the BJP announced candidates on Monday, 19 are reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) and nine for Scheduled Castes (SC). State BJP president and Bilaspur MP Arun Sao was fielded from Lormi, Surguja MP and Union Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Renuka Singh from Bharatpur-Sonhat (ST reserved) and Raigarh Lok Sabha member Gomti Sai from Pathalgaon (ST). Has gone.
Former IAS officer OP Chaudhary, who had lost the last election from Kharsia, has been fielded from Raigarh. While Sampat Aggarwal, who had contested the elections as an independent candidate five years ago, is the BJP candidate from Basna. Former IAS officer Neelkanth Tekam, who joined the BJP after leaving distinguished services in August, will contest from Keshkal (ST) seat. Apart from this, former Union Minister and former state BJP chief Vishnu Dev Sai has been fielded from Kunkuri (ST).