Congress retains ‘land of Ram’ Chitrakoot, keeps BJP out

BHOPAL: Congress retained Chitrakoot assembly seat on Sunday, with party candidate Neelangshu Chaturvedi defeating his nearest BJP rival Shankardayal Tripathi by 14,333 votes — a bigger margin than in 2013 — and winning a record 52% of the vote share in the last 20 years.
Snatching a morale-boosting victory a year ahead of the assembly elections in MP, Congress overcame a high-octane BJP campaign, and defeated the saffron party in two places where CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan had stayed for the night and also at the husting of Tripathi.
The bypoll was necessitated by the death of Congress MLA Prem Singh, who had won by 10,970 votes (37% vote share). The voting took place on November 9.
The bypoll is significant as it is perhaps the last before the assembly election and crucial to BJP’s slogan of ‘Ab ki baar, 200 paar’ for 2018 polls.
BJP tried to put up a brave face and said that it had won only once in this Congress bastion. The party had thrown everything into this bypoll — the CM campaigned intensively, a dozen ministers camped there for a month, RSS workers covered its length and breadth, and even the UP deputy CM was roped in.
But voters handed Congress its biggest win ever in the ‘land of Ram’. Congress was quick to rub it in. “BJP lost in the land of Ram Lalla (Lord Ram is said to have spent 12 years of his exile in Chitrakoot) because it deviated from Ram,” said a senior Congress leader.
With supporters coining a new slogan: “Chitrakoot mein lag gaya kaam, Jai Shri Ram Jai Shri Ram”, MPCC chief Arun Yadav termed it as “a meaningful victory”. “The fall of Lanka has started from the bypoll of Chitrakoot, where Lord Rama spent most of his exile years. There were many ministers overlooking election management and the government machinery was deployed for just one seat. The CM stayed in the constituency for the last three days of campaigning. Despite that, people voted for Congress,” he said.
Accepting defeat, Chouhan tweeted that “public mandate was supreme in democracy”. “I thank the people for their support. Nothing will come in the way of Chitrakoot’s development. My aim is to develop entire MP,” he tweeted.
State BJP president Nandkumar Singh Chauhan said the loss was in no way a reflection of the party’s chances in 2018. “Chitrakoot is a traditional Congress seat. Since Independence, BJP won the seat only once — in 2008. Whether it was 2003 or 2013, Chitrakoot went with Congress but BJP formed the government with a huge majority. It would be unfair to link this bypoll result to the next assembly polls.”