CNN Central News & Network–ITDC India Epress/ITDC News Bhopal: Counting of votes for byelections in 13 assembly constituencies across seven states—West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Himachal Pradesh—began on Saturday.
Bypolls were held in Maniktala, Bagdah, Ranaghat Dakshin and Raiganj assembly seats in West Bengal; Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh in Himachal Pradesh; Vikravandi assembly constituency in Tamil Nadu; Jalandhar West in Punjab; Badrinath and Manglaur assembly seats in Uttarakhand; Rupauli assembly seat in Bihar’s Purnea district; and Amarwara in Madhya Pradesh.
West Bengal
The saffron party had won three of the four seats in West Bengal―Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin and Bagdah―in the 2021 assembly elections. The bypolls were necessitated as Krishna Kalyani from Raiganj, Biswajit Das from Bagdah and Mukut Mani Adhikari from Ranaghat Dakshin gave up their seats to contest the Lok Sabha polls.
Himachal Pradesh
One of the prominent candidates in Himachal Pradesh includes Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife Kamlesh Thakur. The seats fell vacant after Independent legislators Hoshiyar Singh (Dehra), Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur), and K.L. Thakur (Nalagarh), who had voted in favour of the BJP in the Rajya Sabha polls held on February 27, resigned from the state assembly on March 22 and joined the saffron party the next day. The BJP has fielded all the three Independent MLAs from their respective seats.
