Chhattisgarh elections: Congress ends 15-year drought with 68 seats, BJP gets 15

RAIPUR: In one of the biggest Assembly election upsets, Congress swept Chhattisgarh after 15 years. As per the trends available late Tuesday, Congress won 68 seats, BJP 15, BSP 2 and former chief minister Ajit Jogi’s Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (J) 5 seats.

Chief minister Raman Singh submitted his resignation to the governor and said he accepts responsibility for BJP’s poor performance.

Congress insiders also said they were not anticipating this kind of one-sided verdict against BJP, though they had an inkling they would outperform the latter.


At a press conference, Chhattisgarh Congress in-charge PL Punia said the verdict was for parivartan (change). “We humbly accept the mandate. People have not just given us adhikar (mandate) but assigned us the duty to fulfil the agenda we had promised before elections,” he said.

Anti-incumbency ran strong and but for two — Brij Mohan Agarwal from Raipur (South) and Ajay Chandrakar from Kurud — all other state ministers lost. Shailesh Pandey, who joined Congress six months ago, turned out to be giant killer as he defeated veteran BJP minister Amar Agarwal to represent Bilaspur constituency in the 90-member assembly.

The results are a historic deviation, with the victory margin between BJP and Congress reduced to merely 0.75% in the assembly polls of 2013. The outcome in that election was BJP winning 49 constituencies and the Congress 39.