RAIPUR: The ruling Congress party in Chhattisgarh bounced back in the urban body polls after facing a major setback in the 2019 parliamentary polls when the BJP won nine of the 11 Lok Sabha seats. The saffron party then got a vote share of 50.45 percent, a sizeable increase from the 33 percent it got in the 2018 Assembly election where it won just 15 of the 90 seats. The Congress formed government in the state with a landslide performance winning 68 seats.
Now out of the ten municipal corporations in Chhattisgarh, the mayoral candidates of Congress party managed to win from eight.
The party has won from Raipur, Rajnandgaon, Jagdalpur, Bilaspur, Durg, Dhamtari, Chirmiri and Raigarh. The elections for the Mayoral posts municipal corporations in Ambikapur and Korba are to be held later this week.
“We will win the remaining two as well. The results were an approval of the Bhupesh Baghel government’s welfare policies”, said the state Congress president Mohan Markam.
The Congress leaders who won the Mayoral polls included Hema Deshmukh (Rajnandgaon), Ramsharan Yadav (Bilaspur) and Safira Sahu (Jagdalpur) were elected earlier while Aijaz Dhebar (Raipur), Vijay Dewangan (Dhamtari), Kanchan Jaiswal (Chirmiri), Dhiraj Bakliwal (Durg) and Janki Katju (Raigarh).
The BJP, however, alleged the Congress government used money power and official machinery. “It will not sustain for long”, asserted the BJP state president Vikram Usendi.
The Congress got an edge over the opposition BJP winning 1283 corporator posts out of the 2840 in the 151 urban bodies in the state. The BJP gave a tough fight and secured victory in 1131 wards.
The Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (J), the regional outfit floated by the former chief minister Ajit Jogi in June 2016, could manage to win only 36 seats, and 364 independents across the state have emerged victorious.
The elections were held in 151 urban local bodies, including 10 municipal corporations, 38 municipal councils and 103 nagar panchayats. The voter turnout of 78.73 percent was recorded in the polls held on December 21.
The Bhupesh Baghel cabinet had in October last year cleared the proposal on reverting to ballot papers and holding indirect Mayoral elections in the urban local bodies polls. The Chhattisgarh Municipalities Act was consequently amended.