Polling on in 230 Seats of Madhya Pradesh & Chattisgarh’s 70 Seats

New Delhi: Voting is being held on Thursday in all 230 assembly seats of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh’s 70 seats.

In both these states, it is a faceoff between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress.

In MP, voting will be held from 7 am. to 6 pm except for Baihar, Lanji, and Parswara assembly seats of Balaghat district and some booths of Mandla and Dindori districts, where voting will be held till 3 pm.

The first phase of polling in Chhattisgarh for 20 seats was held on November 7. Over 18,000 polling stations have been set up in the state for voting in this second phase. Out of these, 727 are ‘Sangwari’ booths where women polling personnel have been deployed.

The BJP rules in Madhya Pradesh, while in Chhattisgarh, the Congress seeks to continue in power.

The BJP has not declared anyone as its CM candidate in both Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The saffron party is trying to encash on the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the election campaign.

In Madhya Pradesh, the Kamal Nath-led Congress government was in power in the state for 15 months, until March 2020, when it collapsed due to a rebellion led by Jyotiraditya Scindia, in which 22 MLAs loyal to him resigned from the BJP.

The BJP has not projected Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan as its clear choice for the chief ministerial post while the Congress has put forward Kamal Nath as its clear choice for the post.

In Chhattisgarh, the BJP, which ruled the state continuously between 2003 and 2018, is seeking to replace the Congress government led by Chief Minister Bhupesh Bahgel.