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Lok Sabha elections 2019: Congress looks to retain 2018 win momentum in Chhattisgarh
The Congress hopes to repeat its performance in the state assembly elections held last year when it wrested power from the BJP by winning 68 out of the 90 assembly seats.
Close to 68.41%voters turned up to cast their vote in the remaining seven Lok Sabha seats of the total 11 in the state, in the third phase of the general election on Tuesday.
Voting in Raipur, Durg, Bilaspur, Korba, Janjgir-Champa (reserved seat in the Scheduled Caste category), Surguja and Raigarh (both seats reserved in the Scheduled Tribes category) took place amid tight security.
In Raigarh district, a 46-year-old woman collapsed and died while she was waiting in a queue to vote on Tuesday. “…Anjela Toppo was waiting for her turn to vote at polling booth number 3 in police line area at Raigarh district headquarters when she collapsed,’’ Raigarh’s additional police superintendent, Abhishek Verma, said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is hoping to retain its dominance in the state, where it has won 10 out of the 11 seats since 2004. In 2014, it won six of the seats that went to the polls on Tuesday.
The Congress hopes to repeat its performance in the state assembly elections held last year when it wrested power from the BJP by winning 68 out of the 90 assembly seats.
Some of the important candidates in the fray include former MLA Pratima Chandrakar of Congress, who hails from the Kurmi community, which is classified as an Other Backward Caste category. Pitted against her is another Kurmi leader Vijay Baghel who is the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate. Janjgir-Champa witnessed a triangular fight among Ravi Bhardwaj of Congress, Guharam Ajgale of the BJP, and Dauram Ratnakar of the Bahujan Samaj Party.
In Odisha, voting for six parliamentary and 42 assembly constituencies ended with 61.51% voter turnout. In Dhenkanal district, a polling official died inside a booth after he suffered a heart attack in Parjang while voting was in progress. His body will be handed over to his family members after post-mortem, officials said. EVM glitches were reported from two booths in Badamba and Deogarh assembly constituencies following which polling was adjourned.
The Election Commission has ordered fresh polling on April 25 in nine booths where voting was disrupted during the second phase of polling on April 18.
