Voting is underway in Madhya Pradesh for the byelection on the Chitrakoot Assembly constituency of Satna district. Voting began at 8 am and is set to go on till 5 pm on Thursday. Counting of votes for the Chitrakoot Assembly bypoll will take place on November 12.
The bypoll in Chitrakoot was necessitated after Congress MLA Prem Singh died in May 2017. Prem Singh had won the Chitrakoot seat thrice – in 1998, 2003 and 2013. The Congress has now fielded Nilanshu Chaturvedi against BJP’s Shankardayal Tripathi in the assembly segment, which lies bordering Uttar Pradesh.
With Chitrakoot being a Congress bastion for three elections, it will be a litmus test for the party to retain the seat. Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party is hoping to grab the Chitrakoot seat before the state goes to polls in November 2018.
BJP’s Surendra Singh Gaharwar had lost to Prem Singh in 2013 by 12,000 votes. It remains to be seen if the Congress can manage to retain its hold over Chitrakoot before the Madhya Pradesh Assembly Elections in 2018.
