Counting of votes for byelections in 13 assembly constituencies across seven states—West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Himachal Pradesh—began on Saturday.
Bypolls were held in Maniktala, Bagdah, Ranaghat Dakshin and Raiganj assembly seats in West Bengal; Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh in Himachal Pradesh; Vikravandi assembly constituency in Tamil Nadu; Jalandhar West in Punjab; Badrinath and Manglaur assembly seats in Uttarakhand; Rupauli assembly seat in Bihar's Purnea district; and Amarwara in Madhya Pradesh.
West Bengal
The saffron party had won three of the four seats in West Bengal―Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin and Bagdah―in the 2021 assembly elections. The bypolls were necessitated as Krishna Kalyani from Raiganj, Biswajit Das from Bagdah and Mukut Mani Adhikari from Ranaghat Dakshin gave up their seats to contest the Lok Sabha polls.
Himachal Pradesh
One of the prominent candidates in Himachal Pradesh includes Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur. The seats fell vacant after 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 saffron party the next day. The BJP has fielded all the three Independent MLAs from their respective seats.
Uttarakhand
The Manglaur bypoll was necessitated by the death of sitting BSP MLA Sarwat Karim Ansari in October, while the Badrinath seat fell vacant after sitting Congress MLA Rajendra Bhandari resigned and switched to the BJP in March this year.
Bihar
The by-election in Rupauli was because of 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. As many as 11 candidates were in the fray in the bypoll.
Punjab
The Jalandhar West 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, while 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.
Madhya Pradesh
The assembly by-election became necessary in Amarwara after Congress MLA Kamlesh Shah crossed over to the BJP in March. Scheduled Tribes-reserved seat in Chhindwara district saw a three-cornered contest between the BJP, which fielded Kamlesh Shah, the Congress's Dheeran Shah Invati and Gondwana Gantantra Party's (GGP) Devraman Bhalavi.
Tamil Nadu
The demise of DMK legislator N. Pughazhendhi had led to the byelection in Vikravandi which saw a triangular contest between the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's candidate Anniyur Siva (alias Sivashanmugam A) pitted against Pattali Makkal Katchi's (PMK) C Anbumani and Naam Tamilar Katchi's K Abinaya.
This was the first elections since the fiercely contested Lok Sabha polls that saw Congress-led INDIA bloc giving a tough fight to NDA and securing 231 seats.
Four of the states where byelections were held are ruled by constituents of the INDIA bloc.
—With agency inputs
