Raipur, Jun 4 (PTI) The BJP has maintained a lead in 10 out of 11 Lok Sabha seats in Chhattisgarh, as per the trends available so far.
The Congress managed a lead only in the Korba seat, where its sitting MP Jyotsna Mahant, wife of the incumbent leader of opposition Charandas Mahant, was ahead by a margin of 6,860 votes over the BJP’s influential woman leader Saroj Pandey.
Counting of votes began at 33 centres at 8 am on Tuesday, and postal ballots were counted in the first half an hour.
In the high-profile Rajnandgaon seat, Congress leader and former chief minister Bhupesh Baghel, who was initially leading, was trailing by a margin of 9,878 votes against the BJP’s sitting MP Santosh Pandey.
In another crucial seat, Raipur, BJP leader Brijmohan Agrawal was leading by a margin of 97,307 votes against Congress’s Vikas Upadhyay.
The BJP’s sitting MP, Vijay Baghel, was ahead against his nearest rival, Rajendra Sahu of the Congress, by 81,451 votes in Durg.
In the Naxalite-hit Bastar seat (Scheduled Tribe reserved), the BJP’s Mahesh Kashyap was leading by a margin of 35,69 votes against Congress’s firebrand leader Kawasi Lakhma.
The BJP’s Tokhan Sahu, a former MLA, was leading by a margin of 21,382 in Bijapur against Congress’s Devendra Yadav, an incumbent MLA.
In Surguja (ST), BJP candidate Chintamani Maharaj, who defected from the Congress before the last assembly polls, has a lead of 28,732 votes over the Congress’s Shashi Singh.
In the tribal-dominated Raigarh, BJP’s Radheshyam Rathiya was leading by a margin of 77,920 votes against the Congress’s Dr Menka Devi Singh, who belongs to the erstwhile royal family of Sarangarh.
BJP candidate Rupkumari Chaudhary was ahead by a margin of 6,113 votes in the Mahasamund seat against the Congress’s Tamradhwaj Sahu, a former state minister.
In the Kanker seat, BJP candidate Bhojraj Nag was leading by a margin of 26,848 votes against the Congress’s Biresh Thakur.
In the lone SC-reserved Janjgir-Champa seat, BJP woman leader Kamlesh Jangde was ahead by a margin of 33,255 votes against former state minister and Congress candidate Shivkumar Dahariya. PTI TKP ARU
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