Last phase of Chhattisgarh Assembly polls today

RAIPUR: A three-way contest is in the offing as Chhattisgarh goes for the second and concluding phase of Assembly polls on Tuesday for 72 seats spread across 19 districts, with the ruling BJP wrestling it out with the opposition Congress and the Ajit Jogi-mayawati-led alliance emerging as a formidable third front.

A total of 1,079 candidates are in the fray, and both Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are contesting all the 72 seats. The Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is in the fray for 25 seats and its ally and former Chief Minister Jogi’s Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (J) is vying in 46 seats.

The Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has fielded candidates in 66 constituencies.

Polling will be held from 8 a.m to 5 p.m in all 72 seats where an electorate of over 1.5 crore, including over 77 lakh male and over 76 lakh female voters are eligible to exercise their franchise. There are nearly 1,000 voters from the third gender.

Elaborate security arrangements including use of helicopters and drone have been put in place for the polls to take place at over 19,000 polling booths and over a lakh security personnel have been deployed. For the Maoist-affected Gariaband, Dhamtari, Mahasamund, Kabirdham, Jashpur and Balrampur districts, extra security arrangements have been made.

Carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000, the state where the BJP is in power since 2003, is witnessing a three-way poll battle for the first time. Jogi — who ruled the state for the first three years as a Congress Chief Minister, later floated his own outfit and aligned with the BSP and the CPI — is perceived to impact the poll battle where the vote share difference between the BJP and the Congress was less than one per cent in 2013.