Rajnandgaon: The counting of votes for the bypoll to the Khairagarh Assembly seat in Chhattisgarh began on Saturday morning and as per the early trends, the Congress candidate is leading by a margin of 1,242 votes, officials said. Both the ruling Congress and opposition BJP in the state are eyeing to win the seat that falls in the Naxal-hit Rajnandgaon district, where a by-election was necessitated after Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J) MLA Devvrat Singh died in November last year.
"The counting of votes in the bypoll held on April 12 in Khairagarh seat began at 8 am at the godown of state seeds development corporation here," a poll official said. As per the early trends, Yashoda Verma of the Congress was leading by a margin of 1,242 votes against his nearest rival Komal Janghel of the BJP after three rounds of counting, he said. Verma secured 4,436 votes, while Janghel bagged 3,194 votes after the initial rounds of counting. JCC (J) candidate Narendra Soni has secured 49 votes, he said. The voter turnout in the bypoll for the seat located in the state's Naxal-affected Rajnandgaon district was 77.88 per cent. Postal ballots were first taken up for counting followed by votes cast in the EVMs, the official said, adding that the entire process will be done in 21 rounds.
A total of 10 contestants were in the fray, but political experts feel that this time the fight is virtually between the ruling Congress and opposition BJP as the JCC (J) has lost its appeal after the demise of Ajit Jogi in 2020. Devvrat Singh, who belonged to the erstwhile royal family of Khairagarh, quit Congress in 2017 and joined former JCC (J) the next year. He contested the 2018 Assembly polls on the JCC(J) ticket from Khairagarh. He defeated BJP candidate Komal Janghel by a thin margin of 870 votes.
This time, the BJP has once again fielded Komal Janghel, a former MLA, for the bypoll, while Yashoda Verma, the Khairagarh block unit chief of Congress, is the ruling party's nominee. Janghel and Verma both belong to the Lodhi caste, a numerically powerful OBC community in the Khairagarh area. However, stakes are high for the ruling Congress, as it is fighting to retain this seat, which was once considered its bastion. Congress has promised the people to make Khairagarh a district if it wins the seat.
In the 2018 assembly polls in Chhattisgarh, the Congress registered a landslide victory winning 68 seats in the 90-member House decimating the BJP to 15. The JCC (J) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had bagged 5 and 2 seats respectively. Subsequently, the state witnessed by-polls to three assembly seats which were won by Congress, improving its tally to 70 in the assembly.
Read: Bypoll Results 2022: Trinamool leading in both Ballygunge and Asansol seats
PTI
