The bureaucrat-turned-politician OP Chaudhary, who is BJP candidate in Congress bastion Kharsia Assembly constituency, is fighting it out against all odds to win the seat for the BJP.
Chaudhary is a local OBC young person who quit his IAS job just before Assembly polls announcement to launch his career in politics. He is locked in a direct fight with sitting MLA Umesh Patel, son of the former Congress State chief Nandkumar Patel who was martyred in Naxal attack in 2013.
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has also fielded Vijay Jaiswal, who was supported by Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (J). Jaiswal has a strong influence in certain areas of Kharsia seat.
Though Congress candidate Umesh Patel has a solid support base in the seat as his family is deep rooted in Kharsia politics but Chaudhary is no mood to give up the fight and analysts say that Congress has been challenged in its bastion for the time ever and the result could go either way.
Chaudhary, is also known as a ‘blue-eyed boy’ of Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh.
Nirakar Patel, a close friend of Late Nandkumar Patel and a fatherly figure for Umesh, who is also election convenor of Umesh, while talking to The Pioneer expressed his hope that people of each and every home of Kharsia have family relations with Patels. “They will definitely cast their votes in favour of Umesh and will ensure his huge victory,’’ he added.
Fanendra Chaudhary, uncle of OP Chaudhary, candidly admitted that there is a close contest in Congress stronghold this time.
He said that youth and intellectuals are supporting Chaudhary. However, he accepted that the old generation in constituency was sympathetic towards Congress candidate.
Notable, Kharsia is a Congress bastion and never ever a candidate from any other party had recorded victory from this seat.
The family of Patel is representing the constituency for decades and father of Umesh, late Nandkumar Patel, retained the seat from 1990 till his death in 2013. He was elected from the constituency five times in a row in 1990, 1993, 1998, 2003 and 2008.