Bypoll results to seal BJP govt’s fate in MP
BHOPAL/LUCKNOW/AHMEDABAD: Counting of votes would be held on Tuesday in assembly byelection to 28 seats in Madhya Pradesh, where the fate of Shivraj Singh Chouhan government hangs in the balance, and 30 seats in 10 other states in the first major pan-India electoral exercise amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The counting will begin at 8 am, and as per the Election Commission’s COVID-19 guidelines, a candidate, his poll agent and counting agent can remain present in the counting hall, officials said, adding various measures have been taken to ensure social distancing and avoid crowding. The stakes are high for both the BJP and the Congress in the byelections.
While the ruling BJP needs at least eight more MLAs for a simple majority in the MP Assembly, the Congress will be hoping to regain its turf as it had sitting MLAs in 27 seats out of 28 in the state where bypolls were held.
Overall, the Congress had sitting MLAs in 42 seats out of 58, while the BJP had seven. The saffron party is fielding over 30 candidates who had won from the Congress ticket but switched sides and resigned, necessitating the bypolls.
In Uttar Pradesh, it will a test of popularity for the Yogi Adityanath government as the BJP, which has a comfortable majority in the Assembly, is contesting on seven seats six of which it had won in the last election while one was with the Samajwadi Party. Counting of votes will be held in eight seats in Gujarat, four seats in Manipur and one seat in Haryana, all of which were with the Congress; one seat in Chhattisgarh which was with Ajit Jogi’s Janata Congress; two seats in Jharkhand which were held by the Congress and its ally JMM; two seats in Karnataka which were with Congress and the JD(S). Also, votes will be counted in two seats in Nagaland held by NPF and NDPP, one seat in Telangana, which had been won by TRS, and two seats in Odisha held by the BJD and BJP.