Voting Begins For Byelections To 13 Assembly Seats In 7 States. High Stakes Battle For TMC, BJP In Bengal

The voting for bypolls, first electoral exercise after Lok Sabha elections, began on Wednesday on 13 seats in seven states.

Voting began on 13 assembly seats in 7 states during Wednesday bypolls.

Source : PTI

The polling began for byelections to 13 Assembly seats in seven states on Wednesday, the first electoral exercise after the Lok Sabha elections. The bypolls will decide the fate of many veterans and some debutants including Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur. 

The assembly seats where voting is underway include Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin, Bagda and Maniktala (West Bengal); Badrinath and Manglaur (Uttarakhand); Jalandhar West (Punjab); Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh (Himachal Pradesh); Rupauli (Bihar); Vikravandi (Tamil Nadu) and Amarwara (Madhya Pradesh).

The bypolls are being held against vacancies created either due to deaths or resignation of incumbent members. 

The stakes are high for ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal as it looks to capitalise on its improved performance in the Lok Sabha polls while the Bharatiya Janata Party seeks to leverage the significant leads it made in the four constituencies in the parliamentary polls. In the 2021 West Bengal assembly polls, the TMC had won the Maniktala seat while the BJP won Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin and Bagda. Later, the BJP MLAs switched to the TMC.

The Maniktala bypoll was necessitated after the death of sitting TMC MLA Sadhan Pandey in February 2022.

Pandey's wife Supti is in the fray from this seat on a TMC ticket while Krishna Kalyani has been fielded from Raiganj and Mukut Mani Adhikari from Ranaghat Dakshin.

Madhuparna Thakur is fighting the contest from Badgah, a Matua-majority constituency. 

The BJP has fielded All India Football Federation president Kalyan Chaubey from Maniktala, Manoj Kumar Biswas from Ranaghat Dakshin, Binay Kumar Biswas from Bagdah and Manas Kumar Ghosh from Raiganj.

The bypolls in Himachal Pradesh are being held in three assembly constituencies — Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh.

The seats fell vacant after three Independent legislators — Hoshiyar Singh (Dehra), Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur) and K L Thakur (Nalagarh), resigned from the House on March 22. Their resignation came after they voted in favour of the BJP in the Rajya Sabha polls held on February 27. 

The three former MLAs have been renominated from their respective seats by the BJP after they joined the saffron camp. A total of 13 candidates are in the fray in the three segments with 2,59,340 voters.

The Congress has fielded Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur from Dehra.