Congress wins Chitrakoot by-poll

Bhopal: Congress candidate Nilanshu Chaturvedi was on Sunday declared elected to the Madhya Pradesh Assembly from Chitrakoot constituency, defeating the BJP by 14,133 votes.

Chaturvedi led right from the start of vote count at 8 a.m. and kept increasing his winning lead, officials said. After 19 rounds of counting, he worsted the Bharatiya Janata Party's Shankar Dayal Tripathi.

The election was called after the death of Chitrakoot's Congress legislator Prem Singh. A total of 12 candidates were in the fray including nine independents.