Chhattisgarh assembly elections: Samajwadi Party announces list of candidates

New Delhi, Oct 21: Samajwadi Party on Sunday has announced names of 3 candidates for first phase and names of 6 candidates for second phase of upcoming Chhattisgarh Assembly Elections.

In the first phase of Chhattisgarh Assembly Elections, Santosh Suman, Bimlesh Dubey and Chabindra Verma will contest from Bijapur, Jagdalpur and Dantewada respectively for Samajwadi Party.

For the second phase, Navin Gupta, Yogendra Bhoi, Jiban Singh Yadav, Mukesh Lahare, Amarnath Agarwal and Subendra Singh Yadav will contest from Raipur West, Basna, Akaltara, Pamgarh, Korba and Vaishali Nagar respectively.

The Gondwana Gantantra Party will fight the assembly polls in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh in alliance with the Samajwadi Party, its chief Heera Singh Markam said Sunday, as he all but ruled out a tie-up with the Congress in the two poll-bound states.

Eighteen naxal-affected constituencies will go to polls in the first phase on November 12, while the rest of the 72 constituencies would go to polls in the second phase on November 20.

Earlier, Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party had also released its second list of 12 candidates. The party has forged an alliance with former chief minister Ajit Jogi's Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J) and the Communist Party of India, and will contest 33 Assembly seats.

Meanwhile, nine more candidates have filed nomination papers for the first phase of Chhattisgarh polls. This takes the number of candidates who have filed their papers to 11.

On Saturday, two candidates each filed their papers for Rajnandgaon, Antagarh and Dantewada seats and one each for Khairagarh, Dongargarh and Dongargaon, an official said.

For Dantewada seat, Congress's Devti Karma and Communist Party of India's (CPI) Nanda Ram Sori filed their papers. Karma is the sitting Congress MLA from Dantewada. Others who filed nomination papers Saturday included Dinesh Singh (Shiv Sena) from Khairagarh and Rajkumar Sahu (Shiv Sena) from Dongargaon.

Nominations cannot be filed on Sunday, it being holiday, so only two days - October 22 and 23 - are now left for filing of nominations for the first phase, the official said.