Raipur: After suffering crushing defeats in Assembly and parliamentary polls in the past year, Congress put up a good show in the Chhattisgarh civic body elections and won four out of ten municipal seats, while the ruling BJP was reduced from six to four.
The remaining two seats were won by independent candidates, including a eunuch.
“Congress won municipal corporation polls in Raipur, Ambikapur, Korba and Jagdalpur, while the BJP bagged Bilaspur, Rajnandagon, Durg and the newly-formed Dhamtari,” an election official told PTI.
“Two other corporations, namely Chirmiri and Raigarh were won by independent candidates,” the official said.
In the previous civic body polls held in 2009, the BJP had won six seats, while the Congress won three. The prominent Raipur municipal corporation was retained by Congress as its candidate Pramod Dubey defeated BJP's Schchidanand Upasane by a whopping margin of 16,338 votes.
Two-time corporator Dubey was chosen as the Congress candidate this time, denying ticket to incumbent Congress mayor Kiranmayee Nayak which proved fruitful for the party. Jagdalpur's seat in the Maoist-heartland of Bastar region was won by the Congress's Jatin Jaiswal who defeated BJP's Yogendra Kaushik by 2,637 votes. BJP's incumbent mayor Kiran Dev was denied ticket from the seat this time.
However, the Congress failed to retain the Bilaspur municipal corporation despite raising the issue of botched sterilisation surgeries which occurred during November last year.
Ramsharan Yadav, the new face of Congress suffered a loss at the hands of BJP's Kishore Rai by a huge margin of 35,117 votes for Bilaspur mayoral post.
Former BJP MP Madhusudan Yadav comfortably emerged victorious in Rajnandgaon Municipal Corporation, defeating Congress's Vijay Pandey by 35,265 votes. In previous polls, the corporation had witnessed victory by Congress's Naresh Dakaliya. This municipal corporation holds importance as Chief Minister Raman Singh is the MLA from Rajnandgaon seat while his son Abhishek Singh is MP from Rajnandgaon parliamentary constituency.
An eunuch called Madhu Kinnar created history by winning the election to the mayor's post in the Raigarh Municipal Corporation as an independent candidate defeating his nearest rival from the BJP, Mahaveer Guruji by 4,537 votes.
Another independent candidate Domru Reddy won the Chrimiri corporation against BJP's Sanjay Singh by 8,693 votes.
Elections to the remaining two municipal corporations, namely, Bhilai and Birgaon (newly formed) corporations of state are due in 2015.
Elsewhere, in elections to muncipal councils and nagar panchayats, the Congress has managed to do well, though details are still awaited.
As per election officials, out of 39 municipal councils, the Congress has won ten municipal councils, while the BJP won seven and others bagged one. Out of 105 nagar panchayats, Congress won 29, BJP won 22, BSP won two, while others won in seven. Since the final result is yet to be officially announced, it is still not clear how many councils and nagar panchayats the two parties would head eventually. Chhattisgarh had witnessed two phased-polls last month for 154 urban bodies in the state.
