Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha election: Congress' Bhupesh Baghel trailing behind BJP candidate

At 12.30pm, Baghel, also known as "kaka", is behind Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Santosh Pandey, data from the Election Commission shows.

Former Chhattisgarh chief minister and Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel is trailing on the Rajnandgaon seat in Chattisgarh by a margin of 45,263 votes.

Senior Congress leader and former Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel.(File)

At 12.30pm, Baghel, also known as "kaka", is behind Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Santosh Pandey, data from the Election Commission shows. Follow full coverage of the Lok Sabha elections.

Rajnandgaon, a BJP bastion in Chhattisgarh for over three decades, went to the polls on April 26 in the second of the seventh phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. During the 2019 elections, Santosh Pandey defeated Congress' Bhola Ram Sahu by 1,11,966 votes, or 50.7 percent of the vote share.

In the 2014 elections, BJP leader Abhishek Singh secured the seat with 643,473 votes, with Congress leader Kamleshwar Verma coming in second.

The BJP, which returned to power in the Assembly polls last December, has never lost the Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha seat since the formation of Chhattisgarh in 2000, except for a parliamentary bypoll in 2007, when it was defeated by the Congress.

Bhupesh Baghel, who was expected to re-deliver Chhattisgarh to the Congress party in last year's state Assembly polls but failed, was named in the Congress's first list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections 2024 on March 8.

He has a strong presence in the Patan constituency, from which he has won assembly elections multiple times. Baghel has been elected from the Patan constituency to the Chhattisgarh Legislative Assembly five times over the past three decades. Last December, the Congress leader won the Patan assembly seat once again with a wide margin of 19,723 votes by defeating his distant nephew and BJP leader Vijay Baghel.

Chhattisgarh voted in three phases: the first phase ended on April 19, second on April 26, and the last on May 7.