Kharge to attend event in Chhattisgarh's Janjgir-Champa district on Aug 13

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge will visit Chhattisgarh on Sunday to attend a state government event in Janjgir-Champa district, officials said on Saturday.

Kharge will attend the 'Bharose Ka Sammelan' programme to be held in Janjgir city at 1:30 pm, they said, adding that chief minister Bhupesh Baghel will also remain present.

This will be the second visit of Kharge to the Congress-ruled state after assuming charge as the AICC chief last October.

The visit is seen as a launch of Congress' campaign for the Chhattisgarh assembly polls, due later this year.

Kharge will land at Swami Vivekananda Airport in Raipur at around 12:10 pm on Sunday and will leave for Janjgir in a helicopter, an official said.

After attending the event, he will depart from Raipur for Delhi at 4:20 pm, he said.

In the 2018 assembly elections, the Congress, despite a landslide victory, could win only two of the six seats in Janjgir-Champa district. Of the rest, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) won two segments each.

In the previous elections, Congress had won 68 of the total 90 seats in Chhattisgarh, while the BJP finished a distant second at 15. The JCC (J) bagged five segments and its ally BSP 2. The Congress currently has 71 members in the House.