E-Paper
Polling turnout begins to rise in Marwahi assembly bypoll in Chhattisgarh
Polling is being held amid the tight security and Covid-19 protocol.
The bypoll for the Marwahi assembly bypoll in Chhattisgarh recorded 21.52% polling till 11 am, an official said Tuesday.
Polling is being held amid the tight security and Covid-19 protocol.
Officials said that all the protocols of Covid-19 were in place in all 286 booths of the constituency and Covid-19-infected voters can cast their votes in the last one hour of polling.
Marwahi is a reserved seat for scheduled tribes. There is a direct fight between Congress and the BJP in the bypoll that was necessitated after Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J) MLA and former chief minister Ajit Jogi passed away in May this year.
The constituency has been the bastion of Jogi for last two decades but this is the first time in last 20 years when the Jogis are not in the fray because Amit Jogi’s nomination was rejected.
Jogi’s nomination was rejected following a high-power committee’s report which found that he was not a tribal. The nomination papers of Jogi’s wife Richa Jogi, who had filed nomination for the same seat, were also cancelled by the district collector on the same ground
A total of 1,91,004 voters, comprising 93,725 males, 97,265 females and four from the third gender, are eligible to vote in the constituency.
As many as 286 polling stations have been set up, of which 126 have been categorised as sensitive.
Around 1,400 security personnel have been deployed for the bypoll, results of which will be announced on November 10.
The main fight is between Congress nominee K K Dhruw, a former medical officer from the area, and BJP’s Gambheer Singh, a former professor at the Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Medical College, Raipur.
In the 2018 Assembly polls, Ajit Jogi had polled 74,041 votes in Marwahi, beating the BJP’s Archana Porte by a margin of 46,462 votes, with the Congress coming third.
