Union Home Minister Amit Shah will on Monday remain present during filing of nominations by former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh and three other Bharatiya Janata Party leaders in Rajnandgaon for the state assembly polls scheduled next month. The Union minister will be on a visit to the poll-bound state on Monday where he will remain present during the filing of nomination process and will later address a public rally at the State High School ground in Rajnandgaon city, a BJP leader said, a BJP leader told PTI.
The three-time former CM, Singh, has been fielded from his traditional Rajnandgaon seat. The six-time MLA has been elected to the state legislative assembly from the seat thrice in 2008, 2013 and 2018.
Singh will be contesting senior Congress OBC leader and Chhattisgarh Mineral Development Corporation Chairman Girish Dewangan.
In 2018, the Rajnandgaon seat saw competition between Congress’ Karuna Shukla who had joined the grand old party after quitting the BJP. She lost the poll to Singh by a margin of 16,933 votes.
The other three BJP candidates that will be filing nominations along with Singh are Geeta Ghasi Sahu (Khujji seat), Bharat Lal Verma (Dongargaon) and Vinod Khandekar (Dongargarh-Scheduled Caste reserved).
The party has, however, not projected anyone as the chief ministerial candidate.
The opposition BJP has so far announced candidates for 85 seats out of the total 90, while the ruling Congress has declared candidates for 30 seats.
Elections to the 90-member Chhattisgarh Legislative Assembly will be held in two phases, with the first phase on November 7 with 20 assembly constituencies on the cards with 12 are reserved for Scheduled Tribe (ST) and one for Scheduled Caste (SC) category.
The second phase of polling will take place on November 17 where the remaining 70 seats will be in the fray.