A whopping 123 candidates remain in electoral fray for seven parliamentary seats in Chhattisgarh after the last date of withdrawal of nomination papers on Monday.
These parliamentary seats will elect their new members of parliament on April 23, the third and final phase of polling in the state.
According to information provided by chief electoral officer’s office, the time for withdrawal of nominations was till 3pm on Monday. With that nomination processes have been completed for all the three-phase elections.
After the expiry of withdrawal dates, 10 candidates remained in the fray in Sarguja, 14 in Raigarh, 15 in Janjgir, 13 in Korba, 25 each in Bilaspur and Raipur and 21 in Durg .
A total of 11 candidates had filed nominations for Surguja Lok Sabha seat out of which one nomination paper was rejected during the scrutiny. No one withdrew nomination.
In Raigarh 14 candidates filed nominations and all of them are in the fray as no nomination got rejected and no one withdrew from the contest.
In Janjgir, a total of 18 candidates filed nomination papers but three of them later backed out of the race, thus leaving 15 candidates in the fray.
In Korba a total of 20 candidates filed the nomination papers out of which two were rejected during scrutiny and five candidates withdrew the nomination papers leaving 13 contestants.
In Bilaspur, 27 candidates filed nomination papers out of which two withdrew nominations on Monday, leaving 25 candidates in the fray.
For the Durg seat also 27 candidates filed nominations papers, but nominations of two got rejected and four decided against contesting, leaving 21 candidates in the race.
Raipur seat witnessed highest number of candidates filing nomination papers with 32 of them filing nominations. But during scrutiny six nomination papers were rejected and later one candidate withdrew the nomination, leaving 25 candidates in the contest.