Rajnandgaon, Apr 12 (PTI) A provisional voter turnout of 77.88 per cent was recorded on Tuesday for the bypoll to the Khairagarh Assembly constituency in Chhattisgarh, which passed off peacefully amid tight security in the segment which falls under the Naxal-affected Rajnandgaon district, a poll official said.

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A total of ten candidates were in the fray but the main contest lies between the ruling Congress and the opposition BJP.

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The counting of votes will be taken up on April 16.

The bypoll to the Khairagarh constituency became necessary after Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J) MLA and former MP Devvrat Singh died last November.

“Voting began at 7 AM amid tight security. After the deadline for voting ended at 5 pm, 77.88 per cent voter turnout was recorded. But this figure is provisional”, the official said, adding that no untoward incident was reported during polling which was by and large peaceful.

In the 2018 assembly elections, Khairagarh had recorded a voter turnout of 84.59 per cent.

“As many as 2,11,516 voters- 1,06,266 males and 1,05,250 females - can exercise their franchise, for which 291 polling stations have been set up. Of these, 53 have been recognised as hypersensitive polling booths and 11 as sensitive,” he said.

As many as 22 companies of central armed police force apart from the state police personnel were deployed around Khairagarh where the area bordering Madhya Pradesh is considered Naxal-affected.

The seat had witnessed a triangular contest in the 2018 assembly polls when the late Ajit Jogi-led Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J) had entered the poll arena. Khaiargarh was among the five seats won by the JCC in the 90-member state assembly.

Devvrat Singh, who belonged to the erstwhile royal family of Khairagarh, had quit Congress in 2017 and joined the JCC (J) the next year. He contested the 2018 assembly polls on the JCC(J) ticket from Khairagarh in which he defeated BJP candidate Komal Janghel by a thin margin of 870 votes.

This time, the BJP has once again fielded Komal Janghel, a former MLA, for the bypoll, while Yashoda Verma, the Khairagarh block unit chief of Congress, is the ruling party's nominee. Janghel and Verma both belong to the Lodhi caste, a numerically powerful OBC community in the Khairagarh area.

The JCC (J) has fielded Narendra Soni, a lawyer and son-in-law of the erstwhile royal family of Khairagarh.

Stakes are high for the Congress as the Khairagarh seat was once considered its bastion. Congress has promised the people to make Khairagarh a district if it wins the seat.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)