Counting of votes for the Assembly bypolls held in 13 constituencies across seven States on July 10, in underway with results expected on Saturday evening.
The Assembly bypolls were held in Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Himachal Pradesh. Of the 13 seats which went to the polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress and Trinamool Congress had each held two, while one seat each had been held by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Janata Dal (United), Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Independents held the remaining three seats.
Bihar
The by-election to the Rupauli assembly seat in Bihar’s Purnea district saw a voter turnout of 52.75%.
The by-election was necessitated by the resignation of sitting MLA Bima Bharti, who had won the seat for JD(U) several times but quit the party recently to contest the Lok Sabha election on an RJD ticket .Following her loss in the parliamentary election, she contested the bypoll as an RJD candidate. The RJD hopes that Bharti will win the seat.
Altogether 11 candidates were in the fray in the bypoll, in which the JD(U) had fielded Kaladhar Prasad Mandal, who had contested the 2020 Assembly polls from the seat as an Independent.
West Bengal
The bypolls for West Bengal’s Maniktala, Bagdah, Ranaghat Dakshin and Raiganj Assembly seats were held on July 10. Raiganj witnessed the highest voter turnout at 71.99%, followed by Ranaghat Dakshin at 70.56%, Bagdah at 68.44% and Maniktala at 54.98%.
Madhya Pradesh
A turnout of 78.71% was recorded in the by-election for the Scheduled Tribe reserved constituency of Amarwara in Chhindwara district on Wednesday, the official said.
The fate of the nine candidates, including those from the BJP, Congress and Gondwana Gantantra Party (GGP), will be decided in the 20 rounds of counting. The by-election to this Scheduled Tribes-reserved seat in Chhindwara district was prestigious for both the ruling BJP and opposition Congress, as Chhindwara was considered a stronghold of senior Congress leader Kamal Nath until recently.
Congress won the Amarwara seat in the 2023 assembly elections, but the BJP’s Vivek Bunty Sahu won the Chhindwara Lok Sabha seat this time by defeating Nath’s son Nakul Nath. The Assembly by-election became necessary after three-time Congress MLA Kamlesh Shah crossed over to the BJP in March this year.
Uttarakhand
Votes for the Manglaur and the Badrinath Assembly constituencies in Uttarakhand were polled on July 10. The bypoll to the Manglaur seat was marred by violence that left four people injured, even as a 67.28% polling was recorded in the constituency. The voter turnout in Badrinath was 47.68% and polling there remained peaceful.
The Manglaur bypoll was necessitated following the death of sitting BSP MLA Sarwat Karim Ansari in October last year. The Badrinath seat fell vacant after sitting Congress MLA Rajendra Bhandari resigned and switched to the BJP in March.
The BSP fielded Ansari’s son Ubedur Rehman against Congress nominee Qazi Nizamuddin in Manglaur. Gujjar leader and BJP nominee Kartar Singh Bhadana was also in the fray from the Muslim and Dalit-dominated constituency which has been held either by the BSP or the Congress in the past.
In Badrinath, there was a direct contest between BJP’s Rajendra Bhandari and Congress newcomer Lakhpat Singh Butola.
Punjab
Polling in the the Jalandhar West Assembly seat took place saw a voter turnout of 54.98%, a sharp drop from the 67% the Assembly segment saw in the 2022 Atate elections.
The Jalandhar West (Reserve) assembly constituency saw a multi-cornered contest among major political outfits like the ruling AAP in Punjab, the Congress and the BJP. Fifteen candidates were in the fray.
The seat fell vacant after Sheetal Angural resigned as the AAP legislator and joined the BJP in March.
The AAP fielded Mohinder Bhagat, the son of former minister and former BJP MLA Bhagat Chunni Lal, for the bypoll. The Congress placed its bet on Surinder Kaur, a former senior deputy mayor and a four-time municipal councillor of Jalandhar. The BJP fielded Angural, who had won this seat in the 2022 Punjab assembly polls on an AAP ticket.
Though the Shiromani Akali Dal had fielded Surjit Kaur for the bypoll, the Sukhbir Badal-led outfit later withdrew its support and disowned her.
Himachal Pradesh
Polling was held for the Dehra, Hamirpur and the Nalagarh Assembly constituencies on July 10.
Thirteen candidates, including of the BJP and the Congress, are in the fray. The Nalagarh assembly constituency had recorded the highest polling at 79.04%, followed by Hamirpur (67.72%) and Dehra (65.42%).
The overall voting percentage of the three bypolls was 71%, according to the data of the state election department The seats fell vacant after the three Independent legislators Hoshiyar Singh (Dehra), Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur) and K L Thakur (Nalagarh), who had voted in favour of the BJP in the Rajya Sabha polls held on February 27, resigned from the state assembly on March 22 and joined the party the next day.
Their resignations, however, were accepted by the assembly speaker on June 3, and the seats were declared vacant, necessitating the by-elections.
The BJP fielded all the three former MLAs from their respective seats .The Congress fielded Kamlesh Thakur, wife of Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, from Dehra, repeated its candidate Pushpinder Verma from Hamirpur and gave ticket to five-time Indian National Trade Union Congress president, Himachal Pradesh unit, Hardeep Singh Baba, from Nalagarh.
Tamil Nadu
The byelection to the Vikravandi Assembly constituency in Villupuram district recorded 82.48% polling. The voting was largely peaceful, barring an altercation between PMK workers and security personnel and a knife attack on a woman voter.
The electoral fate of as many as 29 candidates including that of the DMK candidate Anniyur Siva, the PMK candidate C. Anbumani and the Naam Tamilar Katchi nominee Abinaya Ponnivalavan will be known when the final result of the bypoll will be out by Saturday evening.
The by-election saw a huge voter turnout of 82.48% with as many as 1,95,495 voters exercising their franchise at the hustings.
