Bharatiya Janata Party has released the list of 21 candidates for the assembly elections to be held later this year in Chhattisgarh. Vijay Baghel is one of the names on the aforementioned list who is a Lok Sabha MP from the Durg constituency. He is scheduled to contest polls from the Patan assembly seat which falls under the Durg district.
Interestingly, Congress leader and Chief Minister of the state Bhupesh Baghel is the present MLA from there. More importantly, there is an uncle-nephew relationship between the two leaders, as Vijay Baghel is the nephew of Bhupesh Baghel. Now, it would be intriguing to witness the electoral contest between the uncle and nephew in this seat.
The Patan assembly has long served as the district’s main political hub. There has been political consciousness among freedom fighters in the region since the beginning and the results of the awareness are regularly visible during the polls. This is the reason behind the change in results every time during elections because the voters have always voted with their discretion.
Bharatiya Janata Party had fielded Moti Lal Sahu in front of the Congress veteran from this seat last time and he had won by more than 27000 votes. This is the fourth time that Vijay Baghel will be in the fray against his uncle. He had first contested the poll in 2003 on Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) ticket from the Patan seat opposite the latter and was defeated.
He was defeated a second time in 2008 by the Congressman by a margin of 7,500 votes. Afterwards, the nephew and uncle faced off yet again in 2013 and the former failed to win for the third time. Vijay Baghel replied, “I will accept the party’s decisions if they send me to run from the Patan assembly constituency,” when asked if he would contest in the assembly elections from the Patan constituency, in an interview.
Ram Vichar Netam, the party’s most prominent tribal figure, has also had his seat transferred by the Bharatiya Janta Party. He has been now chosen to run for the Ramanuganj seat rather than Balrampur. He has been in politics for more than 30 years and has been a cabinet minister for 10 years. He has also served as the president of Scheduled Tribe Morcha. The party has given a ticket to former Chief Minister Raman Singh’s nephew Vikrant Singh from Khairagarh.
There are a total of 90 assembly seats in Chhattisgarh. The state currently has a total of 11 Lok Sabha and 5 Rajya Sabha seats. There are a total of 27 districts in Chhattisgarh. A total of 51 seats in the state are reserved for general, 10 seats for Scheduled Castes and 29 seats for Scheduled Tribes.
The BJP suffered a humiliating loss in the 2018 Chhattisgarh assembly elections. The party only succeeded in winning 15 seats whereas Congress was able to capture 68 seats and formed the government. It is currently preoccupied with addressing numerous concerns as well as determining the causes behind the seats it lost and formulating a future strategy.
Furthermore, Bharatiya Janata Party has also announced the names of 39 individuals who are set to contest the upcoming assembly election in Madhya Pradesh.
