BHUBANESWAR: The byelection for the Bijepur assembly seat will be held on February 24, the
Election Commission of India (ECI) announced on Tuesday, ending days of speculation over its delay.
The notification will be issued on January 30 and February 6 is the last date for filing nomination papers, a statement issued by the ECI said. Counting will be held on February 28.
The Bijepur seat fell vacant after
Congress MLA Subal Sahu died of cancer on August 22 last year. State's chief election officer D N Gupta said the ECI considered the seat vacant from October 16, the date on which the Orissa high court disposed of an election petition filed by BJD leader
Prasanna Acharya. Acharya, who had lost to Sahu in 2014, had alleged poll irregularities against the deceased Congress leader.
Earlier, the BJD and the Congress had accused the BJP of influencing the ECI to delay the bypoll to suit itself. The allegations gained traction when last week the poll panel did not announce the date along with those of Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland.
BJP spokesperson Golak Mohapatra said all those who had been questioning the ECI should understand that the poll panel has its own way of figuring out when to conduct elections. Reacting to it, Acharya said questions were raised because the ECI had notified the bypolls for other
Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha seats which had fallen vacant after Bijepur.
All the three parties are attaching huge political significance to the byelection, whose outcome could set the tone for the 2019 assembly and Lok Sabha elections.
A part of Bargarh district in western Odisha, Bijepur has been a stronghold of the Congress. Sahu was thrice elected from the seat on a Congress ticket. But in the panchayat election held in February last year, the BJP had won six of the seven Zilla Parishad zones in Bijepur with the BJD winning the other one. While the BJD has already announced the name of Sahu's wife, Rita Sahu, as its candidate, the BJP and the Congress are likely to announce their nominees soon.
(Representative Image)
