Chhattisgarh’s first Chief Minister and Congress leader Ajit Jogi who had announced in January that he would stay away from active politics for a year, has cheered his party’s decision on Tuesday to field him from Mahasamund lok Sabha constituency.
The Congress released the names of the candidates for Chhattisgarh’s remaining two seats. While the wheelchair-bound Jogi would take on BJP’s Chandulal Sahu in Mahasamund, a tribal woman, Phulo Devi Netam, will contest from insurgency-hit Kanker (ST) constituency. Netam holds considerable clout in Kanker where the BJP has decided to bet on Vikram Usendi, a former Minister who lost in the 2013 Assembly polls.
Dozens of die-hard Jogi supporters charged up the political atmosphere in Raipur on Tuesday soon after the Congress unveiled his name as the party candidate for Mahasamund. The Jogi-supporters raised vociferous slogans at the Congress State headquarters and some crowded the squares in Raipur while a buoyant Jogi himself claimed at his residence that he was set to register a massive victory.
Jogi had in the 2004 general elections won from his home turf in Mahasamund and registered victory by nearly 1.25 lakh votes. Jogi had also met a near-fatal road accident in 2004 Mahasamund poll campaign leading to paralysis. “I am a humble ‘sipahi’ of the Congress and have always maintained high degree of regard for Sonia Ji and Rahul Ji, I will surely live up to their expectations by winning the seat with a massive margin this time too,’’ Jogi told reporters. He rejected reports that there was a Modi wave in the State and insisted that his party would do well in all the eleven lok Sabha seats.
In 2009 parliamentary polls, the BJP had won 10 of the 11 seats that included Mahasamund. The State goes to the polls in three phases starting from April 10.