Chhattisgarh: BJP's Asha Ram Netam wins Kanker seat by barest of margins, just 16 votes

After a neck-and-neck fight between BJP's Asha Ram Netam and INC's Shankar Dhruwa in the Kanker assembly elections. Netam defeated Dhruwa by just 16 votes, one of the lowest defeat margins in 2023 Assembly Elections.

Hyderabad: In a dramatic and fiercely contested battle for the Kanker assembly seat, BJP candidate Asha Ram Netam emerged victorious by a razor-thin margin, securing a win with just 16 votes against his closest rival, Shankar Dhruwa of Congress. The gripping electoral showdown witnessed a relentless neck-and-neck tussle, eventually ending in a win for Netam.

Kanker Assembly constituency has an estimated Scheduled Caste population of 4.34% and Scheduled Tribe population of 58.79%, according to the report of the Delimitation Commission of 2008. In the 2023 Chhattisgarh Assembly elections, there were a total of 1,82,274 eligible electors in the constituency, of which 87,176 were male and 95,096 female and 2 registered voters were of the third gender.

The election results unfolded with unparalleled intensity as the BJP's Netam and INC's Dhruwa engaged in a relentless clash for every vote. The roller-coaster journey of the electoral battle saw both candidates alternating leads, keeping the outcome uncertain and the atmosphere charged with anticipation. The final count revealed an astonishingly narrow victory as Asha Ram Netam secured 67,980 votes, narrowly edging past Shankar Dhruwa's tally of 67,964. The margin of victory, a mere 16 votes, by far stands as the closest electoral contest in the 2023 Chhattisgarh Assembly Elections.

Throughout the intense seven-hour-long counting process, the race remained incredibly close, with the lead fluctuating marginally between the two candidates. Asha Ram Netam managed to maintain a slight edge, though the battle seemed poised to go "down to the wire," reflecting the nail-biting uncertainty that enveloped the election outcome.

Earlier this year, when BJP named Netam in its first list of 21 candidates for Chhattisgarh polls, Netam said he had never thought that he will get a ticket as he was "just a party worker".

“All the BJP workers will work together to win against Congress. Our issues will be the same as that of people. Villages should be connected to cities by roads. All of PM Modi’s policies like ‘Har Ghar Nal’ (tap water in every house) will reach people. We’ll also tell people about Congress’s failure,” Netam told ANI back in August.