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Journalism of Courage
After clinching the Assembly elections in 2023 and the Lok Sabha polls the following year, the BJP has continued its winning streak in Chhattisgarh.
The party on Saturday swept the urban local body polls, winning all the 10 mayor posts as well as getting the majority in the nagar palikas and nagar panchayats across the state.
While the Congress lost most of its old seats in the civic body polls, a silver lining came for the party in the form of a win of the nagar panchayat chairman’s seat in Kunkuri, which is the Assembly constituency of Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai.
Overall, the BJP won all the 10 mayor seats in the municipal corporation polls. This is a massive turnaround for a party that could not get a single mayor elected in the 2019 urban local body polls in Chattisgarh.
The BJP also won 35 of the 49 chairman posts in the nagar palikas and 81 of the 114 chairman posts in the nagar panchayats.
The Congress’s performance was dismal. The party ended up bagging eight chairman posts in the nagar palikas and 22 chairman posts in the nagar panchayats.
In the 2019 urban local body elections in Chattisgarh, the Congress had won nine of the ten mayoral seats.
Similarly, the Congress had won 48 nagar panchayat chairman seats in 2019, while the BJP got 38. The Congress had also won 21 nagar palika seats then as against the 16 won by the BJP.
Bouyed by the BJP’s win, CM Sai termed it “historic”. “This massive victory is the victory of the successful Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, Modi’s guarantee, the development work done by our government in thirteen months and the people’s unwavering faith in the Bharatiya Janata Party,” he said.
Among those who won the mayoral elections from the BJP was Jeevdharn Chauhan, a tea-seller from Raigarh.
Referring to Chauhan’s victory, Sai said, “In Raigarh, by making a hard-working tea-seller the mayoral candidate, the BJP proved that the loyalty and dedication of workers is respected.”
The BJP also seemed bolstered by the win in the Raipur mayor seat where the party returned to power after 15 years, with its nominee Meenal Choubey getting 3.15 lakh votes against the Congress’s Dipti Dubey, who got 1.62 lakh votes.
When asked about the party’s defeat in Kunkuri, the CM said, “We honour the mandate of the public and I assure that development works will not stop in the region.”
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won one chairman nagar palika seat in Bodari of Bilaspur district.
