Rajnandgaon:Congress’ Bhupesh Baghel is trailing against BJP's Santosh Pandey by 9,878 votes as early trends shows on Tuesday.
Considered as the cultural capital of Chhattisgarh, Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha seat is counted among the VIP seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. From here, Santosh Pandey of BJP and former CM Bhupesh Baghel of Congress are in the fray. The contest between the two has transformed the constituency into a hot seat.
This Lok Sabha seat derived its name from Rajnandgaon district, which is popularly known as 'sanskardhani' (cultural capital) of Chhattisgarh. But this seat has also been a witness to a member of Parliament losing his membership after being found guilty in the infamous 2005 cash-for-query scandal.
Considered a stronghold of BJP, the party has been winning from here since 2004. BJP's Pradeep Gandhi won the election from here in 2004. In 2009, saffron party’s Madhusudan Yadav won from here. In 2014, Raman Singh's son Abhishek Singh became the MP from here on a BJP ticket. In 2019, BJP fielded Santosh Pandey who defeated Congress candidate Bhola Sahu by a massive margin of over 1.11 lakh votes.
2024 polls:The total number of registered voters in this constituency in 2024 polls was 1868021, and the seat saw a voting turnout of 77.42% (1446247 total count of votes), according to the Election Commission’s data. The seat went to polls in phase 2 on April 26, 2024.
In the 2019 LS Polls,Santosh Pandey won from Rajnandgaon, getting 662,387 votes, comprising 50.68% of the total number of votes polled. He defeated Bhola Ram Sahu of INC by a margin of 1,11,966 votes. BJP’S Abhishek Singh had won from this seat in 2014, polling 643,473 votes (54.61%) and defeating Kamleshwar Verma of INC by a margin of 2,35,911 votes.
