Durg MP Vijay Baghel has made it to the first list of 29 candidates announced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the Chhattisgarh Assembly elections on Thursday. Vijay Baghel will run in the Patan constituency. With this, the BJP set up an uncle-grandson clash in Patan, the territory of Minister Chhattisgarh and Parliamentary Leader Bhupesh Baghel.
Patan is currently represented by Minister Bhupesh Baghel. Congress is unlikely to move CM Baghel to another seat for the National Assembly election since Patan sent him to the National Assembly five times. The war between Baghel and Baghel is nothing new. This is the fourth time Vijay Baghel has faced his uncle Bhupesh Baghel in Patan and the third time as a BJP candidate. Vijay Baghel defeated his uncle in the 2008 Patan Parliament elections by nearly 7,500 votes. However, Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel won in 2003 and 2013.
In the previous elections, Bhupesh Baghel won comfortably over BJP's Motilal Sahu by a margin of 27,000 votes. Patan is seen as an important seat for Bhupesh Baghel, who has won the constituency five times.
He was first elected MLA to Patan in 1993 and won seats in the 1998 and 2003 Congressional polls. He lost his seat to his nephew Vijay Bgahel in the 2008 National Assembly elections, before coming back and winning the constituency in 2013 and 2018.
The Chhattisgarh Council polls are expected to take place in the coming months.
