The list of candidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) released on Thursday for the Chhattisgarh assembly elections 2023, to be held in the last months of this year, shows the possibility of a ‘Baghel vs Baghel’ battle on an important assembly seat. The BJP has again fielded MP from Durg Lok Sabha seat Vijay Baghel in the state elections, and is hoping that he will defeat his uncle, the present Chief Minister of Congress, Bhupesh Baghel, from the Patan assembly seat. The schedule of Chhattisgarh Assembly Elections 2023 has not been announced at the moment, and at present it is not even decided whether the Chief Minister will contest from the seat called Apna Garh or not.
Vijay Baghel, the chairman of the BJP’s 31-member ‘manifesto committee’ for the upcoming assembly elections, defeated Bhupesh Baghel in the same seat in the 2008 assembly elections. At that time he contested for the Chhattisgarh Legislative Assembly for the first time. However, in the year 2013, he lost the election to Bhupesh Baghel on the same seat. In the year 2018, he did not contest the assembly elections, and in the year 2019 general elections, he contested against Pratima Chandrakar of Congress from Durg parliamentary seat and won by about four lakh votes.
BJP has released the first list of 21 candidates
The BJP, which is trying to return to power in Chhattisgarh in the upcoming assembly elections, on Thursday released the first list of its candidates for 21 assembly seats on which the party had to face defeat in the last election. There were 16 completely new faces in this list, most of whom are district panchayat body representatives, while five candidates are former legislators. The names of five women are also in this list.
At present all 21 seats are with the Congress.
Out of the 21 assembly seats for which BJP has announced candidates, 10 seats are reserved for Scheduled Tribe (ST) and one seat for Scheduled Caste (SC). At present, all 21 seats are in the possession of the Congress.
It appears that in its first list of candidates, the BJP has declared candidates for those seats on which there were not many differences in the party regarding the candidates. Significantly, in the year 2018 elections, BJP did not win any of these seats, and in 2013 also, when BJP formed the government in the state, BJP had to face defeat in 16 out of these 21 seats.
“Hurry announcement to give time to the candidates…”
A BJP leader said in a conversation with the news agency PTI that the party is not very strong in these 21 seats, so the candidates have been announced early, so that they get enough time to go to the people and connect with them.
In the 2018 assembly elections, the Congress had won 68 out of the total 90 seats, while the BJP came second by winning only 15 seats. JCC (J) got five seats and its ally BSP got two seats. At present, the Congress has 71 MLAs in the state assembly.
