Chhattisgarh Assembly Elections: Congress MP Deepak Baij aims for a hat-trick from Chitrakot   

Chhattisgarh Congress president Deepak Baij is contesting for a third term in Chitrakot (@DeepakBaijINC)

The Chitrakot Assembly seat, which went polling on November 7, is categorised as a semi-urban seat in Chhattisgarh and features a direct contest between Congress state president and Lok Sabha MP Deepak Baij and BJP candidate Vinayak Goyal.

Baij emerged victorious in the 2013 and 2018 Assembly elections, and subsequently, he was chosen as the party’s candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from the Bastar parliamentary constituency, where he defeated the BJP candidate.

In 2018, Deepak Kumar Baij won the seat by a margin of 17,770 votes (13.32 percent) as he had secured 46.93 percent of the total votes polled, whereas BJP’s candidate Lachhuram Kashyap had received 44846 votes (33.61 percent).

As he was elected to the Lok Sabha, the Congress retained the seat in the bypolls with Rajman Benjam winning the race.

The saffron party has, this time, fielded Vinayak Goyal, while Baij is running for the third time and aiming for a hat-trick victory.

There are a total of 1,65,327 voters in the seat, which include 78,161 male voters, and 87,165 female voters. In the 2018 Chhattisgarh elections, Chitrakot recorded a voter turnout of 80.32 percent. In 2013 the turnout was 78.89 percent, and in 2008 it was 64.71 percent.

BJP won this seat in the 2008 Assembly elections with a margin of 9,231 votes (10.13 percent), registering 34.72 percent of the total votes polled. The party had fielded Baiduram Kashyap against Congress party’s Pratibha Shah.

Chitrakot in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh is often referred to as 'Mini Niagara' because of its waterfall on the river Indravati, which plunges from a height of approximately 95 feet and stretches 300 metres in width during rains.