 "bhupesh baghel")
The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) list of candidates for the upcoming Chhattisgarh Assembly elections may likely set up a "Baghel vs Baghel" fight in a key constituency.
The party has fielded Vijay Baghel as its candidate from the Patan constituency, a seat represented by his uncle and Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel. This year, there will be a face-off between the Congress and the BJP in the Patan seat.
Vijay Baghel, who heads the 31-member poll manifesto committee of the BJP for the upcoming elections, had defeated Bhupesh Baghel in the 2008 Assembly elections from the same seat.
However, in 2013, he lost to Bhupesh Baghel. He did not contest the 2018 state polls. In the 2019 general election, he contested against Pratima Chandrakar of the Congress from Durg and won by a margin of over 400,000 votes.
Eyeing to make a comeback in Chhattisgarh in the upcoming Assembly elections, the BJP released its first list of candidates for 21 seats where it had faced defeat last time.
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There are 16 fresh faces on the list; most of them are representatives of district panchayat bodies, while five candidates are former MLAs. The list contains five women candidates.
Of the 21 seats for which the party announced nominees, ten are reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) and one for Scheduled Castes (SC). The Congress party currently holds all 21 seats.
The BJP declared candidates in the first list for the seats where there were few differences within the party over the nominees.
While in 2018, the BJP drew a blank in all of these 21 seats, even in 2013 (when it retained power in the state), it suffered defeat in 16 of these seats.
Patan elections 2018
In the 2018 Patan election, Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel won the seat by defeating Motilal Sahu of the BJP with a margin of 27,477 votes.
Patan elections 2013
In the 2013 election, Bhupesh Baghel emerged victorious by a margin of 9,343 votes, defeating BJP candidate Vijay Baghel. Vijay got 58,842 votes.
