Chhattisgarh second phase on Thursday

NEW DELHI: The fates of senior Congress leader Ajit Jogi, who���s hoping to stage a comeback in Chhattisgarh as chief minister, his wife Renu, state BJP chief Vishnudeo Sai, deputy speaker Badridhar Diwan, home minister Ramvichar Netam, his ministerial colleagues Brij Mohan Agarwal and Amar Agarwal, former Union home minister Dilip Singh Judeo���s son Yudhvir Singh and former home minister Nand Kumar Patel will be decided on Thursday when voting for 51 of the 90 assembly seats in the state takes place amid unprecedented security.

Voting for 39 assembly constituencies, spread across the districts of Mahasamund, Dhamtari, Durg, Kabirdham, Rajnandgaon, Bastar, Kanker, Narayanpur, Dantewada and Bijapur had taken place on November 14.

The districts which face the electoral battle on Thursday include Koreya (3 assembly seats), Surguja (8), Jashpur (3), Raigarh (5), Korba (4), Janjgir-Champa (6), Bilaspur (9) and Raipur (13).

With Mr Jogi in the fray from his constituency of Marwahi, which falls in the Bilaspur district, the Congress had fared relatively better in this belt in the 2003 assembly polls. The party had upstaged the BJP in the Raipur-Bilaspur region, bagging majority of the 22 seats.

Mr Jogi is trying his luck from Marwahi yet again, while his wife Renu has been renominated from neighbouring Kota. Their effort to ensure that their party retained its pre-eminent position is being challenged by the BJP, which has launched an aggressive campaign to oust its principal rival from its pedestal.

Besides Mr Jogi and his wife, electoral fortunes of 685 candidates, including 49 women, will be sealed in EVMs, with 88,14,228 voters expected to exercise their franchise. Voting will be held for six seats reserved for SCs, 15 for the STs and 30 unreserved seats during the second leg.

There are 12,073 polling stations across the eight districts. Of these, 2,608 booths have been classified as sensitive and 355 booths as hyper-sensitive.

The Congress has fielded its candidates in 48 seats, while the BJP and the BSP are in the fray in all 51 constituencies. Other political players in the reckoning are Samajwadi Party (31), NCP (3), Shiv Sena(32), Gondwana Ganatantra Party (35), Lok Janshakti Party (17), Bharatiya Janshakti Party (19), Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (14), CPI (18), and CPM (one).

Among constituencies going to polls on Thursday, Kasdol is the largest in terms of area and electorate where as Manendragarh is the smallest.

The first phase of polls in Chhattisgarh, which registered 55% turnout, was marred by disruptions and Naxal violence, in which one CRPF personnel was killed in Dantewada district.

Another four security personnel were injured in two landmine blasts near Gorkha and Chintalnar and over a dozen electronic voting machines were looted in Dantewada and Narayanpur districts.