{"id":494086,"date":"2023-11-15T18:05:37","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T12:35:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/?p=494086"},"modified":"2023-11-15T18:09:57","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T12:39:57","slug":"chhattisgarh-elections-bhupesh-baghel-raman-singh-congress-bjp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/politics\/chhattisgarh-elections-bhupesh-baghel-raman-singh-congress-bjp\/","title":{"rendered":"Campaign for Chhattisgarh elections ends, voters set to choose among jaded candidates"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By Neeraj Mishra<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Priyanka Gandhi closed the campaign in Chhattisgarh with a road show in Raipur with all four Congress candidates on show with her. Of these, only Ramsundar Das, the mahant of the state\u2019s biggest and richest Math, is a new candidate, others are repeat candidates. Pankaj Sharma\u2019s father Satyanarain Sharma opted to make way for his son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This dearth of ideas and people is not limited to the Congress, which has given tickets to 49 of its 72 MLAs, the BJP has repeated 11 of its 13 MLAs. A farce is playing out in Chhattisgarh where 66 of the 90 current MLAs are seeking re-election, which is about 75% of the assembly strength. And if that was not enough, on the remaining seats, the BJP has put up 15 who had lost last time and the Congress has given tickets to 20 old faces who are either MPs, former MLAs and MPs or have been around in the electoral fray for more than two decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Where are the new ideas and energy going to come from? Both parties have concluded that since it&#8217;s more or less a bipolar system in the state, it is enough to make empty, enticing promises. It is estimated that if all the MLAs and few losers of the 2018 elections get re-elected, the Assembly will look much the same as it has in the past two decades. There are at least 40 MLAs who have been ministers under Raman Singh and Bhupesh Baghel, who are likely to get re-elected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Consider the case of Rajim constituency. Amitesh Shukla is contesting his sixth election from the seat and is the only one to get Congress tickets since the state came into being. He has lost twice but that has not stopped Congress from fielding him from his \u201cfamily seat\u201d. His father Shyamacharan Shukla had contested eight times from the same seat and lost only once. Since the constituency came into being in 1957, the Congress has fielded a non-Shukla only twice and at a time when Shyamacharan was under suspension from the party. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An Association for Democratic Reforms report reveals that of the 66 re-contesting candidates, 60 have declared increase in wealth and assets over their 2018 submission. The average increase is in the region of Rs 1 crore. While the top five MLAs whose wealth has increased by more than Rs 10 crore, includes Bhupesh Baghel and his minister Shiv Deharia. Interestingly, the two ministers in Raman Cabinet who had lost in 2018 have shown a decrease in their wealth and assets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If all MLAs and few losers of the 2018 elections are re-elected, the Assembly will not look very different from what it has been over the last 20 years<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":494088,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497,4,125714],"tags":[86,59457,160126,111,2144],"yst_prominent_words":[25282,4101,61617,20827,4211,4360,3813,5528,32608,82713,48577,21710,20871,30082,26776,12140,21001,22296],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2023\/11\/15142831\/BeFunky-design-12.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494086"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494086"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=494086"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=494086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- html is corrupted -->