The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday announced its four remaining candidates for the Chhattisgarh Assembly polls. In the list that includes four new faces, the party has replaced a sitting MLA and fielded an ex-Congress man against Deputy Chief Minister Singh Deo for the high profile contest in Ambikapur Assembly constituency.
From Beltara constituency in the Bilaspur region, sitting MLA Rajnish Singh, who won with a margin of around 7,000 in 2018, has been dropped and the party has chosen 40-year-old Sushant Shukla, from there. Shukla, a former member of the State youth commission, is co-incharge of the state Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the BJP’s youth wing. He is one of the two of the BJP’s 13 sitting MLAs whom the party has denied tickets for the 2023 elections.
The party expects Mr. Shukla would help it secure Brahmin votes in an area that once used to be a stronghold of one of its prominent Brahmin faces, the late former MLA Badridhar Diwan, who was also a foundational member of the BJP.
Meanwhile in Ambikapur, Rajesh Agrawal will take on the sitting MLA and Deputy CM T.S. Singh Deo. Mr. Agrawal, a businessman, had joined the BJP after quitting Congress ahead of the 2018 assembly elections and is currently a member of its Surguja district executive committee. The BJP had lost the elections from Ambikapur in 2008, 2013 and 2018 and in all three elections it had fielded Anurag Singh Deo as its candidate.
The two other candidates, Dhaniram Dhiwar (Kasdol seat) and Dipesh Sahu (Bemetara), are also fresh faces, and take the number of candidates from the Other Backward Classes fielded by the BJP to 33. The ruling Congress too, that has 71 members in the outgoing Assembly, too has also announced candidates for all 90 seats.
