Bypolls for one Lok Sabha, 56 Assembly seats to be held on November 3 and 7

NEW DELHI:  Polls for one Lok Sabha (Balmiki Nagar, Bihar) and 56 assembly seats will be held on November 3 and 7 the Election Commission announced on Tuesday. 

While bypolls to 54 Assembly seats will take place on November 3, polling for the Lok Sabha seat and for two Assembly seats in Manipur will be held on November 7. 

Counting for the seats going to polls would take place on November 10 along with that of the Assembly elections in Bihar.

However, the poll panel has decided not to conduct elections in seven Assembly seats across Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and West Bengal “at this stage” following specific requests from the states concerned.

The term of assemblies in the four states are due to lapse in either May or June next year. The Commission will now hold bypolls for Chhattisgarh (1), Gujarat (8), Haryana (1), Jharkhand (2), Karnataka (2), Manipur (2), Nagaland (2), Odisha (2), Madhya Pradesh (28) Telangana (1) and Uttar Pradesh (7) assembly constituencies.

The 28 Assembly seats in MP fell vacant in March after Jyotiraditya Scindia quit the Congress to join the BJP along with his loyalists. The shift led to the fall of the Congress government in the state, with BJP’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan returning as chief minister.

The bypolls are crucial to the BJP government’s survival in the state as it enjoys a wafer-thin majority in the 230-member Assembly. The BJP has 107 seats and needs to win nine out of the 28 seats.

The Congress, which lost power after its 21 lawmakers resigned, has 88 members in the House.

Before sharing the schedule, the poll panel issued a separate statement on Tuesday to say that it has decided not to announce "at this stage" the conduct of by-elections on seven assembly seats across Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and West Bengal.

The decision has been taken based on inputs received from the chief secretaries and poll officials in these states, the poll panel said in the release.

While there are two vacancies each in the assemblies of Assam, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, one seat is vacant in the West Bengal legislature.

The term of the legislative assemblies of the four states would end on different dates between May and June next year.

Besides the Valmiki Nagar Lok Sabha bypoll in Bihar, by-elections are being held to 28 seats in Madhya Pradesh.

Most of these 28 seats fell vacant when rebel Congress members resigned from the party and the assembly to join the BJP.

After the resignations of the Congress members, the Kamal Nath-led government lost majority and the BJP returned to power.

Earlier, the EC had said that bypolls are pending in 64 assembly seats.

But the figure now stands at 63, including the seven seats in four states where the schedule was not announced on Tuesday.

The reason is that the number of vacant seats in some states has changed due to various reasons, including court cases.

"The figures are not static. We go by the number of clear vacancies on a given date," a senior official explained.

Eight assembly seats are going for bypolls in Gujarat, followed by seven in Uttar Pradesh, two each in Odisha, Nagaland, Manipur, Karnataka and Jharkhand, and one each in Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Haryana.

(With PTI Inputs)