THE NEWSMAN OF INDIA.COM
Bhopal: The Congress has won the crucial by-elections of Chitrakoot in Madhya Pradesh, beating the BJP by a margin of over 14,000 votes.

The seat, a Congress bastion, had fallen vacant after the death of its sitting legislator Prem Singh after a prolonged illness in May.

Mr Singh had won the assembly constituency, bordering Uttar Pradesh, in the 1998, 2003 and 2013 elections. But in 2008, he had lost the seat to BJP’s Surendra Singh Gaharwar.

This time the BJP, which fielded Shankarlal Tripathi, had deployed its top guns to campaign for him. Besides Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya and MP BJP chief Nandkumar Chouhan had also campaigned in Chitrakoot.

But Mr Tripathi was beaten by a margin of 14,333 votes by Congress candidate Neelandhu Chaturvedi. Mr Chaturvedi polled 66,810 votes against Mr Tripathi’s 52,677.

The Congress had built its campaign around the alleged corruption and bad administration of the BJP, which won the state for the third consecutive time in 2013.