Raipur: Eight candidates are in the fray for the May 8 election to the Bastar Lok Sabha seat -- an area where Maoists hold sway.
Officials said Dinesh Kashyap of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Kawasi Lakhma of the Congress were the two main candidates.
The others include Rama Sodhi of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and five independents.
The bypoll for the Scheduled Tribe reserved seat has been necessitated after the death of veteran BJP tribal leader and MP Baliram Kashyap last month.
The BJP has fielded the son of late Kashyap while the the Congress nominee is the legislator of Konta assembly seat, one of the eight assembly segments that form the Bastar parliamentary constituency.
In the assembly polls of 2008, Maoists widely disrupted polling in Bastar and even fired at an Indian Air Force chopper killing a sergeant.
IANS
