By IANS,
Raipur : Chhattisgarh’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition Congress are in the final phase of screening a set of candidates for each of the 90 seats for the November assembly polls.
The BJP, which is expecting to pull off a second straight win in the state, has short-listed a panel of four-five candidates for about 40 seats.
The party is finding it tough to cut down the list of ticket aspirants in about 50 seats, mostly in Bilaspur and Surguja regions where about a dozen potential candidates have staked claim for each ticket.
“The list of short-listed candidates would be ready by mid-September and the party high command will approve the final names for each of the 90 seats by September end,” a party source told IANS.
He added that the BJP would fight the Chhattisgarh polls on the successful Gujarat pattern and about 50 percent of the candidates will be new faces.
The Congress, which lost power to the BJP in the November 2003 polls, will also complete ticket allotment by September end. President of the party’s state unit Dhanendra Sahu and two working presidents – Satyanarayan Sharma and Charandas Mahant – are currently touring the state to make a constituency-wise cut-off list.
The BJP has 52 legislators in the current assembly, while the Congress has 34 and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) have one each. Two seats are vacant. Political analysts say the BSP may surprise everyone else this time with a substantial increase in the number of seats.