Congress Retains Tribal-Reserved Bhanupratappur Seat In Chhattisgarh

The ruling Congress in Chhattisgarh on Thursday won the Bhanupratappur Assembly bypoll, retaining the seat by defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The counting of votes for the December 5 byelection was held on Thursday.

With this, the opposition BJP has suffered a fifth successive defeat at the hands of the ruling Congress in the assembly bypolls held after the 2018 Chhattisgarh elections.

Congress candidate Savitri Mandavi won the bypoll by a margin of 21,171 votes against her nearest rival Brahmanand Netam of the BJP, a poll official here said.

Ms Mandavi polled 65,479 votes, while the BJP's Netam secured 44,308 votes, he said.

Former IPS officer Akbar Ram Korram, who contested as an independent, gave a spirited fight and polled 23,417 votes.

A voter turnout of 71.74 per cent was recorded in the bypoll to this seat, reserved for Scheduled Tribe (ST) candidates and located in the Maoist-affected Kanker district.

The byelection was necessitated due to the death of sitting Congress MLA Manoj Singh Mandavi. The grad old party had fielded his wife.

Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel said people of Bhanupratappur put their stamp of approval to the works done by his government in the last four years.

The late MLA Mandavi's cordial relations with people of his constituency and efforts for the development of the area also worked in favour of the party, he added.

He thanked the people of Bhanupratappur for reposing faith in his government.

When asked about Mr Korram, a candidate of Sarva Adivasi Samaj (SAS), securing the third position, Mr Baghel said, "Statistics shows that number of votes secured by the SAS nominee was the same as polled by Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the 2018 assembly election. This time, both JCC (J) and AAP did not contest. I don't think that SAS has its own vote base. It seems SAS's candidate has received votes of JCC (J) and AAP."

He also took a jibe at the BJP and said the opposition party was struggling to even secure the second position as seen in the counting of votes.

This victory kept the tally of the Congress in the 90-member state assembly remained unchanged at 71.

In 2018, the Congress had registered a landslide victory by winning 68 seats out of 90 in the state while the BJP had won 15. The JCC (J) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) contested the poll in coalition and bagged 5 and 2 seats respectively.

In 2019, the Congress had won bypolls to Dantewada and Chitrakot assembly constituencies. In 2020, Congress won Marwahi seat and later in April this year clinched Khairagarh assembly bypoll.

The current strength of BJP in the state assembly is 14 and JCC(J) 3 while Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has 2 MLAs.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)