Palanpur (Gujarat), Nov 13 (PTI) Voters queued up on Wednesday morning at polling booths for the byelection to Vav assembly seat in Gujarat's Banaskantha district, where the ruling BJP candidate and Congress nominee are the main contestants.
Voting began at 7 am, with BJP candidate Swarupji Thakor being among the early voters.
The polling will continue till 6 pm.
Congress candidate and former MLA Gulabsinh Rajput and BJP's Thakor are the main contestants, but the presence of saffron party rebel Mavji Patel has made it an interesting fight.
Seven other candidates -- six independents and one from the Bharatiya Jan Parishad party -- are also in the fray for the bypoll, which was necessitated following the resignation of Congress MLA Geniben Thakor, who was elected to the Lok Sabha from Banaskantha in June.
There are 3.1 lakh eligible voters in the assembly seat, including 1.61 lakh men and 1.49 lakh women.
A total of 321 ballot units and as many control units are being used for the polling for which 1,412 officials have been deployed.
The counting of votes will be held on November 23.
In the 2022 assembly polls, BJP's Swarupji Thakor lost from Vav seat, a Congress bastion, to opposition party candidate Geniben Thakor.
Mavji Patel (73), who comes from the dominant Chaudhary community, was suspended as BJP's primary member on Sunday for his decision to contest as an independent candidate.
Several key leaders from the Congress and BJP, including Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, state BJP head and Union Minister CR Paatil and Gujarat Congress in-charge Mukul Wasnik, addressed rallies in Vav in the last one week.
The constituency has been a Congress stronghold, with Geniben Thakor winning the seat in 2017 and again in 2022.
In the general elections held earlier this year, Geniben Thakor defeated BJP's Rekhaben Chaudhary, a debutant, by more than 30,000 votes in Banaskantha, becoming the only Congress candidate to register a win in Gujarat.
Vav seat has approximately 83,000 voters of the Thakor community, 50,000 belonging to the Chaudhary community, 43,000 Dalits, 25,000 Maldhari (OBC) and 18,000 Brahmin voters.
Mavji Patel won from Vav in 1990 as the Janata Dal candidate. He then joined the opposition Congress, but switched to the ruling BJP in 2019 after being denied a ticket from Tharad seat in the 2017 assembly polls.
Mavji Patel was the Congress candidate from Tharad seat in Banaskantha district in the 2012 polls, but lost to the BJP. After being denied a ticket in 2017 from the seat, he fought as an independent but lost to BJP candidate Parbatbhai Patel.
In the bypoll held in Tharad in 2019, Congress candidate Gulabsinh Rajput defeated BJP nominee Jivraj Patel. He, however, lost to BJP candidate Shankar Chaudhary in 2022.