New Delhi:
Congress heavy-weight and Chhattisgarh’s outgoing deputy Chief Minister TS Singh Deo lost the state elections to BJP’s Rajesh Agrawal by a margin of 8,367 votes. He was one of the party veterans the Congress was banking on this election.
In the 2018 Chhattisgarh Assembly elections, Mr Deo had won this seat defeating BJP’s Anurag Singh Deo by a margin of 39,624 votes.
Mr Deo, the current titular Maharaja of Surguja, with headquarters at Ambikapur, contested the elections from the Ambikapur constituency.
The Congress, which was confident it would win Chhattisgarh, was in for a shock by mid-afternoon today as the BJP surged ahead. Incoming trends showed a complete reversal of what the exit polls had predicted.
A poll of nine exit polls indicated that the Congress would win 49 seats, three more than the magic number 46, while it gave 38 seats to the BJP. But around 9 pm, the Congress only managed to win 33 seats, while it is leading in two. The BJP already is past the magic number with wins in 51 seats and leads in three more.