NEW DELHI: Voting commenced on Wednesday for bypolls in 15 assembly seats across Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Kerala, and Uttarakhand, with results scheduled to be announced on November 23.
However, these bypolls are not expected to directly impact the composition of the respective legislative assemblies.
In Uttar Pradesh, polling is taking place in Katehari, Karhal, Meerapur, Ghaziabad, Majhawan, Sisamau, Khair, Phulpur, and Kundarki, with 90 candidates contesting. Ghaziabad has the highest number of candidates at 14.
The bypolls mark the first electoral challenge for both the INDIA bloc and the NDA in the state following the Lok Sabha elections.
In the 2022 assembly elections, these seats were divided between the Samajwadi Party (SP), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and BJP ally Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD).
Punjab is seeing bypolls in Gidderbaha, Dera Baba Nanak, Chabbewal (SC), and Barnala. These bypolls were necessitated after the MLAs from these constituencies were elected to the Lok Sabha. Of the four seats, three were previously held by the Congress, while the Barnala seat belonged to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Forty-five candidates, including three women, are vying for these seats, with key contestants such as former Punjab finance minister and BJP nominee Manpreet Singh Badal, Congress’s Amrita Warring, and AAP’s Hardeep Singh Dimpy Dhillon in the fray.
In Kerala, the bypoll in the Palakkad constituency was triggered by the election of Congress MLA Shafi Parambil to the Lok Sabha from Vadakara.
In Uttarakhand, voters in Kedarnath are casting their ballots after the death of BJP MLA Shailarani Rawat. The seat has been a battleground between BJP’s Asha Nautiyal and Congress’s Manoj Rawat, both of whom have represented the constituency in the past.
The Kedarnath constituency has 90,540 eligible voters, including 45,775 women.