By-polls 2020: Voter turnout of 66 per cent recorded till 5:30 pm in MP
New Delhi, Nov 03: Besides the Assembly elections in Bihar, by-polls are being held in 56 Assembly seats across 11 states on Tuesday.
Of the 63 vacant seats in state Assemblies across India, elections will be held in 54 on Tuesday while two seats in Manipur will see polling on November 7.
Eight Assembly seats are up for grabs in Gujarat; seven in Uttar Pradesh; two each in Odisha, Nagaland, Karnataka, and Jharkhand; and one seat each in Chhattisgarh, Telangana, and Haryana.
MP bypolls: 28 Assembly seats to witness contest, 33,000 cops on security duty
Madhya Pradesh (28 seats)
The biggest chunk of Assembly seats going to polls on Tuesday is in Madhya Pradesh, 28.
The by-elections in Madhya Pradesh were necessitated after 22 sitting MLAs of the erstwhile Congress government switched over to the BJP in March 2020, leading to the fall of Kamal Nath's 15-month-old government.
Subsequently, three other Congress MLAs followed the lead of Jyotiraditya Scindia and his supporters, and joined the BJP. Another three seats in the Assembly are vacant due to the deaths of incumbent MLAs.
In the 2018 Assembly elections, the Congress won 114 seats, two short of the majority in the 230-member House; the BJP won 109. But Congress succeeded in forming the government with the support of four Independents, two BSP MLAs, and one SP MLA.
After Scindia took away 22 MLAs and three others followed suit, the Congress's strength was reduced to 88.
With 107 MLAs currently, the BJP needs to win at least nine of these seats to cross the halfway mark in the Assembly, and for Chouhan to continue to remain Chief Minister. The Congress, on the other hand, needs to win all 28 seats if it wants to return to power in the state - or at least 21 in order to give itself a chance to bargain with the BSP, SP and Independent MLAs.
At stake in Madhya Pradesh are the political ambitions of four senior national leaders - Kamal Nath of the Congress, and Jyotiraditya Scindia, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, and Narendra Singh Tomar of the BJP.
Gujarat (8 seats)
The by-elections have been necessitated by the resignations of Congress MLAs ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections in June. The new Gujarat BJP chief, C R Patil, has set himself an ambitious goal of winning all 182 seats in the Assembly elections of 2022. The by-elections are a major test for Patil.
The Congress, which had turned in its best performance in Gujarat since 1995 by winning 77 seats in 2017, would like to win back all its eight seats. The BJP has given five of the eight tickets to the Congress MLAs who resigned to ensure that the BJP retained all its seats in the RS elections.
Uttar Pradesh (7 seats)
A total 93 candidates are in the fray for the elections on November 3. The BJP won six of these seven seats in the landslide election of 2017, most of these wins being the first for the party at these seats in over a decade.
But the BJP's task in these by-elections will be more difficult. Before starting his campaign meetings in Bihar, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath met party workers at each of these seven seats.
Karnataka (2 seats)
Bypolls are being held for the Sira seat in the Tumkur district and the Raja Rajeshwari Nagar seat in the city of Bengaluru. Both constituencies are located in southern Karnataka where the Congress and JDS are considered to be stronger than the ruling BJP.
The Sira seat fell vacant after the Janata Dal Secular candidate B Satyaranarayana, an advocate who won the 2018 polls, succumbed to a chronic illness on August 4.
The R R Nagar seat fell vacant in July 2019 after the Congress MLA Munirathna Naidu, a wealthy civil contractor and film producer, crossed over to the BJP to help the party come to power.
Odisha (2 seats)
The Tirtol and Balasore Sadar seats are going to polls. The by-election in Balasore was necessitated by the death in June of the BJP MLA Madan Mohan Dutta, and the party has fielded his son Manas Kumar Dutta at the seat. The Tirtol by-election was brought on by the death of the BJD's Bishnu Charan Das, a veteran Dalit leader, in July. The BJD has fielded Das's son, Bijay Shankar Das, at the seat.
Jharkhand (2 seats)
A total 28 candidates are in the race for the two seats in Jharkhand, Dumka and Bermo, which will see straight fights between the ruling JMM-Congress and opposition BJP. The by-election in Dumka was necessitated after Chief Minister Hemant Soren decided to retain the Barhait seat and give up Dumka. The Congress MLA from Bermo, Rajendra Prasad Singh, died in May.
Nagaland (2 seats)
By-elections are being held for the Southern Angami-I seat in Kohima district and the Pungro-Kiphire seat in Kiphire district. The by-elections were necessitated by the deaths of then Assembly Speaker Vikho-o Yhoshu and T Torechu of the Naga People's Front respectively.
Manipur (2 seats)
This is the only one of the 11 states going to by-elections, that will see voting on November 7. Two Assembly constituencies, Lilong and Wangjing Tentha, will go to polls along with the third phase in Bihar.
The Election Commission had initially declared five Assembly constituencies in the state as "clear vacant", but announced the election schedule for only two, leaving out Wangoi, Saitu and Singhat. All together, 13 seats are lying vacant in the state Assembly.
Telangana (1 seat)
Thirty four candidates are in the fray for the by-election in Dubbaka Assembly constituency in Siddipet district. The seat fell vacant after the sudden demise of the sitting ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) MLA Solipeta Ramalinga Reddy last August.
Chhattisgarh (1 seat)
The bypoll in Chhattisgarh's Marwahi to witness many firsts - the first election in the state amid the pandemic, the first since the formation of Gaurella-Pendra-Marwahi district, and the first without any member of the Jogi family, which has held the seat since 2001, being allowed to contest the "family bastion".
Marwahi is a reserved seat for scheduled tribes. There is a direct fight between Congress and the BJP in the bypoll that was necessitated after Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J) MLA and former chief minister Ajit Jogi passed away in May this year.
Haryana (1 seat)
Winning the November 3 bypoll for the Baroda Assembly segment in Sonipat district may not mean much numerically for the ruling BJP-JJP alliance in the 90-member Haryana's Vidhan Sabha. However, losing the Jat-dominated seat that it has never won would certainly reflect badly on the ruling alliance, especially BJP.