Bypolls to one LS, 64 assembly seats on October 21
NEWDELHI:BYPOLLS to 64 assembly seats and one Lok Sabha constituency spread across 18 states will be held on October 21 and the counting of votes will be on October 24, the Election Commission announced on Saturday.
While assembly by-elections will be held on 64 assembly seats, the Samastipur Lok Sabha constituency in Bihar will also have a bypoll. The poll watchdog announced the schedule for by-elections to 15 seats in Karnataka, 11 in Uttar Pradesh, five each in Kerala and Bihar, four each in Gujarat, Assam and Punjab, three in Sikkim, two each in Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan and one each in Arunachal Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Odisha and Puducherry.
Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said the bypolls in Karnataka will be held on those seats where sitting MLAS were disqualified recently.
However, late on Saturday, the disqualified legislators said they would seek a stay on the election process on Monday, as their petition challenging the disqualification is pending before the top court.
The 11 UP assembly seats belong mostly to MLAS who won the Lok Sabha elections and resigned as members of the state assembly.
The Samastipur (Bihar) Lok Sabha by-election was necessitated following the death of sitting MP Ram Chandra Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party in July.
In Karnataka, the elections are crucial for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which came to power about two months ago. The party has the support of its 105 MLAS and one Independent MLA. It will need to win at least seven seats to reach a majority of 113 in the 225-member House.
Seventeen MLAS – 14 of the Congress and three from the Janata Dal (Secular) — were disqualified by former Speaker KR Ramesh Kumar in July for resigning and withdrawing support to the Congress-jd(s) government.
Sanjiv Kumar, chief election officer for Karnataka, said the EC was bound by the speaker’s order that the disqualified MLAS could not contest till the end of the term of the assembly, i.e. till May 2023. “When there is a ruling, one is bound by it,” he said.
K Gopalaiah, a former JD(S) MLA who was disqualified, said that they were left with no option but to approach the apex court. Former prime minister HD Deve Gowda of the JD(S) made it clear that his party was not likely to continue alliance with the Congress in the bypolls. BJP state chief Nalin Kumar Kateel said the party would take a call on its candidates in good time. “It is for the Supreme Court to decide on the disqualified MLAS...,” he said.
In Bihar, the stage is set for the two main rival political formations—national Democratic Alliance (NDA) and Grand Alliance (Ga)—to test their respective strengths ahead of the assembly elections next year. Four of the five seats going to the polls were held by the Janata Dal (United).
In Punjab, the ruling Congress is looking to consolidate its hold over the assembly but only one of the four seats is held by it. In Kerala, stakes are high for three major political formations — ruling Left Democratic Front, opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front and Bjp-led NDA.
(with agency inputs)