The BJP in Chhattisgarh on Tuesday won 10 of the 11 seats and was leading in Chhattisgarh bettering their performance from the 2019 elections when they had won nine of the 11 seats. The Congress, won only in one seat this time. Among the winners three are women. Former chief minister Bhupesh Bhagel was among the Congress heavyweights who lost, with sitting BJP MP Santosh Pandey retaining his seat by nearly 44,411 votes in the Rajnandgaon seat. However, Baghel who lost his third Lok Sabha election, brought down the vote gap between the two parties which was 1.11 lakh in 2019 in Rajnandgaon. Also, three former minister Tamradhwaj Sahu, Kawasi Lakhma and Shivkumar Dahariya lost the election. The only reprieve for the party came when sitting MP Jyotsana Mahant, wife of former Union Minister and present leader of opposition in assembly Charan Das Mahant, retained her Korba seat winning by 43,283 votes against BJP's heavyweight Saroj Pandey, a vice president in the party and a former Parliamentarian in both the houses. In Korba one of the factors which worked for the Congress is said to be a narrative that Pandey is an "outsider" while Mahant family has roots in the constituency. Chintamani Maharaj who won from Sarguja was a two time Congress MLA who joined the BJP last year after being denied an assembly ticket. Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai expressed his happiness at the BJP’s performance in Chhattisgarh. “The counting is underway, so let it end first… our performance in some states has been a bit bad but, in other states like Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana, it has been good. Several of our leaders campaigned in Odisha, and the magic of (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi’s guarantee and our manifesto worked in our favour,” he said. The INDIA bloc, he said, “relied on lies like ‘reservation will end (if BJP comes to power) and the Constitution is under threat’. I feel their lies had some effect (on the result).” The BJP, riding high on their recent Assembly polls victory in December 2023, won all the four tribal-reserved seats of Sarguja, Raigarh, Kanker and Bastar and also won the one Scheduled Caste reserved seat, Janjgir-Champa. The BJP’s victory margins were also big in most of the seats, with the party's leader Brijmohan Agrawal creating a state wide record of winning by highest margin of over 5.75 lakh in Raipur. Similarly, BJP got 4.38 lakh in Durg, 2.4 lakh in Raigarh, 1.64 lakh in Bilaspur, and 1.45 lakh in Mahasamund. Even in Janjgir-Champa seat, despite the Congress winning all eight Assembly segments there last year, the BJP was comfortably won by a margin of 60,000 votes. On the other hand, in Kanker, the BJP’s Bhojraj Nag won by a wafer-thin margin of 1,884 votes against Brijesh Thakur who had lost the seat in 2019 by 6,914 votes. Like in Kanker, similar spoilsport was seen in Korba where Gondwana Ganatantra Party (GGP) a tribal party polled 48, 567 votes more than Congress lead of 43, 263. Similarly in Bastar, where BJP lead by 55, 245 votes, about 35, 887 people voted for Communist Party of India (CPI) another 36, 758 voted for NOTA option and 19, 647 voted for BSP. Since its formation in 2000, Chhattisgarh has seen a bipolar contest between the BJP and the Congress, with the BJP winning 10 of the 11 seats in three consecutive Lok Sabha polls between 2004 and 2014, while in 2019 the BJP won nine despite facing a massive defeat in the 2018 Assembly elections, in which it won just 15 of the 90 seats. The ten winners from BJP are Pandey from Rajnandgaon, Chintamani Maharaj from Sarguja, Kamlesh Jangde from Janjgir Champa,Vijay Baghel from Durg, Mahesh Kashyap from Bastar, Radheshyam Rathiya from Raigarh, Roop Kumar Choudhary from Mahasamund, Agrawal from Raipur and BJP's Tokhan Sahu from Bilaspur.
