Congress does well in Chhattisgarh's Bilaspur division but routed elsewhere; Jogis jolted on their turfs

Raipur: The Congress won more than one-third of its total 35 assembly seats in the key Bilaspur division of Chhattisgarh, but that did not prevent its resounding rout in the assembly polls at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The family members of state's first chief minister Ajit Jogi were also trounced in their own pocket-boroughs.

The BJP on Sunday registered a massive victory, winning 54 seats in the 90-member state assembly, while the ruling Congress, which has more than 70 members in the outgoing House, was reduced to 35 segments.

Of the five administrative divisions in the state, Bilaspur has the highest number of seats at 25, followed by Durg (20), Raipur (19), Surguja (14) and Bastar (12).

The Congress won 14 seats in the Bilaspur division in the polls held last month, the BJP clinched 10, while the regional outfit Gondwana Gantantra Party's (GGP) sole seat came from the division.

While the BJP and the Congress won 10 seats each in the Durg division, three other divisions were swept by the saffron party.

The shocker for the Congress came from the tribal-dominated Surguja region where the BJP captured all the 14 segments on offer, shattering the grand old party's dream of retaining power in the state.

In another tribal-dominated division of Bastar, the BJP won eight seats and the Congress four. The saffron outfit bagged 12 seats in the Raipur division, where the Congress finished with seven.

Bilaspur was the only division which the Congress did not sweep in 2018, while the BJP, which faced a rout elsewhere, had won nearly half of its state-wide tally in the region.

This time, Chhattisgarh minister Umesh Patel (Kharsia seat) and former Union minister and speaker of outgoing assembly Charan Das Mahant (Sakti) were among the key Congress candidates who emerged victorious in the Bilaspur division.

Minister Jai Singh Agrawal (Korba) and five other sitting MLAs of the Congress suffered loss in the division.

For the BJP, its state unit president and Bilaspur Lok Sabha member Arun Sao scored an impressive win, defeating his nearest rival by a margin of more than 45,000 in the Lormi segment, while former IAS officer O P Choudhary won by over 64,000 votes in Raigarh.

For the saffron party, major upsets from the region included the defeat of leader of opposition in the assembly Narayan Chandel from Janjgir Champa.

BJP candidates Prabal Pratap Singh Judev and Sanyogita Yudhvir Singh Judev, members of an erstwhile royal family, lost from Kota and Chandrapur, respectively.

The elections also saw decline of former CM Ajit Jogi-founded Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J) and Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the state as both the parties failed to open their account this time.

The JCC (J) contested the 2018 polls in an alliance with the BSP and together they had bagged seven seats.

In 2018, the JCC (J) had won five seats, securing 7.61 per cent of the votes polled, while the BSP bagged two seats with a vote share of 3.87 per cent.

Of these seven seats, five -- Kota, Lormi and Marwahi (won by Jogi's party) and Jaijaipur and Pamgarh (won by BSP) are in the Bilaspur division.

In a jolt to Ajit Jogi's party, his wife and incumbent MLA Renu Jogi lost from Kota and was relegated to the third position with mere 8,884 votes.

Ajit Jogi's daughter-in-law Richa Jogi (wife of Amit Jogi) lost from Akaltara and she, too, finished third.

Jogi party's vote share was reduced to just 1.23 per cent this time.

The BSP this time contested the polls in an alliance with the Gondwana Gantantra Party. Both sitting MLAs of the BSP, Keshav Chandra (Jaijaipur) and Indu Banjare (Pamgarh), lost their seats to the Congress and came third.

The BSP's vote share was reduced to 2.05 per cent from 3.87 per cent in 2018.

Interestingly, the GGP, which had been contesting in several constituencies of Bilaspur and Surguja divisions since the formation of Chhattisgarh in 2000, emerged victorious for the first time in 23 years.

Its candidate Tuleshwar Hira Singh Markam defeated Congress nominee Duleshwari Sidar by a margin of 714 votes in Pali Tanakhar seat.

Tuleshwar Markam's father and former MLA Hira Singh Markam founded the GGP in 1991.

A prominent tribal leader from central Chhattisgarh, Hira Singh Markam, who died in 2020, was elected as an MLA for the first time in 1985 from Tanakhar in undivided Madhya Pradesh on a BJP ticket.

He floated the GGP in 1991 and was later elected MLA twice -- in 1996 and 1998 -- from Tanakhar. The seat was renamed Pali-Tanakhar after delimitation in 2008.