New Delhi:
Chhattisgarh Bypoll Results 2019: Congress candidate Rajman Benzam has won the Chitrakot Assembly seat bypoll in Chhattisgarh by a margin 17,832 votes. Rajman Benzam defeated Lachhuram Kashyap of the BJP.
It is to be noted that an estimated 74.39 per cent of voters exercised their franchise on Monday in bypolls for Chitrakot Assembly seat. Six candidates were in fray from the seat, reserved for Scheduled Tribe (ST) candidates, where the bypoll was necessitated after Congress MLA Deepak Baij got elected to the Lok Sabha from Bastar parliamentary constituency.
In the 2018 Assembly elections, Congress' Deepak Baij defeated BJP's Kashyap from the constituency by a margin of 17,770 votes. In the state polls held last year for the 90-member Assembly, the Congress won 68 seats and the BJP bagged 15. The Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) won five and two seats, respectively.
A total of 229 polling booths were set up and about 4,500 extra troopers were deployed to allow nearly 167,911 electors to exercise their franchise sealing the fate of six candidates.
Bastar has a total of 12 assembly seats and Chitrakot, a mineral-rich zone, and tribal stronghold is one of the key seats that the BJP aims to win. However, the Congress is equally poised to retain the seat. The BJP and the Congress had conducted high-voltage electioneering in the Chitrakot constituency. Chhattisgarh’s former chief minister Raman Singh was the star campaigner for the BJP while Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel led the campaign for the Congress.
