Shah to be present while BJP candidates file nomination in Chhattisgarh

Former Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh and three other Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidates will on Monday file their nomination papers in Rajnandgaon for the state assembly polls scheduled next month.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah will remain present during the filing of nominations of the four candidates. Shah will later address a public rally at the State High School ground in Rajnandgaon city, a BJP leader said.

Elections to the 90-member state assembly will be held in two phases on November 7 and 17.

The opposition BJP has so far announced candidates for 85 seats out of the total 90, while the ruling Congress has declared candidates for 30 seats.

The BJP has fielded Singh, the former three-time chief minister, from his traditional Rajnandgaon seat.

Singh, a six-term MLA, won from the Rajnandagon seat thrice in 2008, 2013 and 2018.

The Congress has fielded its senior OBC leader and Chhattisgarh Mineral Development Corporation Chairman Girish Dewangan from Rajnandgaon.

In the 2018 assembly polls, the Congress fielded Karuna Shukla, who had joined the grand old party after quitting the BJP. She lost the poll to Singh by a margin of 16,933 votes.

The BJP is contesting the upcoming state assembly polls without projecting its chief ministerial face.

The other party candidates who will file nominations along with Singh are Geeta Ghasi Sahu (Khujji seat), Bharat Lal Verma (Dongargaon) and Vinod Khandekar (Dongargarh-Scheduled Caste reserved).

These four seats are among the 20 constituencies of seven districts in the Naxal-affected Bastar division as well as Mohla-Manpur-Ambagarh Chowki, Rajnandgaon, Khairagarh-Chhuikhadan-Gandai and Kabirdham districts, which will go to polls in the first phase on November 7.

Polling in the other 70 constituencies will be held in the second phase.

Of the 20 seats going to polls in the first phase, 12 are reserved for Scheduled Tribe (ST) and one for Scheduled Caste (SC) category.

In the 2018 assembly polls, the Congress won 17 of these seats, while the BJP got two and the Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J) secured one seat.

Later, the Congress won two more seats of the remaining three in bypolls.

Apart from Singh, other prominent BJP candidates for the November 7 elections include four former state ministers Kedar Kashyap, Lata Usendi, Vikram Usendi and Mahesh Gagda, and former IAS officer Neelkanth Tekam.

The Congress has not declared a candidate for Jagdalpur seat, which is among the 20 constituencies slated to go to polls in the first phase.

State Congress chief and MP Deepak Baij, ministers Kawasi Lakhma and Mohan Markam are among the key candidates from the ruling side in the first phase of polls.

In the 2018 assembly polls, the Congress registered a landslide victory by bagging 68 seats and comfortably formed the government. The BJP was reduced to 15 seats, while the JCC (J) and the Bahujan Samaj Party bagged 5 and 2 seats, respectively.

The current strength of the Congress in the assembly is 71.