13 Assembly Seats Voting In Key Polls, First Since Lok Sabha Elections

Bypolls to 13 Assembly constituencies in seven states are being held today, the first since the Lok Sabha elections, which saw the BJP falling short of a majority and the opposition gaining strength. The BJP won 240 seats and the INDIA alliance clinched 232, with the Congress emerging as its biggest constituent, with wins in 99 constituencies.The Assembly seats going to polls are Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin, Bagda and Maniktala in West Bengal; Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh in Himachal Pradesh; Badrinath and Manglaur in Uttarakhand; Jalandhar West in Punjab; Rupauli in Bihar; Vikravandi in Tamil Nadu and Amarwara in Madhya Pradesh. Four of these states are ruled by INDIA constituents while the rest have a BJP or NDA government.The electoral exercise will decide the fate of many veterans and some debutants, including Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife Kamlesh Thakur from the Dehra constituency.The Sukhu government in Himachal Pradesh has survived removal attempts and won bypolls in four out of six Assembly seats which were held with the Lok Sabha elections. Six Congress MLAs and three Independents had cross-voted in favour of the BJP nominee in the Rajya Sabha elections.The Congress MLAs were disqualified and bypolls were held on those six seats earlier. The Independents resigned and joined the BJP and elections for their seats are being held on Wednesday.”Vote for the Chief Minister and not the MLA. Now, Dehra will also become the constituency of the Chief Minister… I will not need to go to the Secretariat to get your work done, I will get it done from the chief minister at home,” Kamlesh Thakur told people while seeking votes.In West Bengal, the stakes are high for both the ruling Trinamool Congress – which beat all expectations and improved its tally in the Lok Sabha polls to 29 of the state’s 42 seats, up from 21 in 2019 – and the BJP, whose figure went down from 18 to 12.The Trinamool won the Maniktala seat in the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections while the BJP won Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin and Bagda. Later, the BJP MLAs switched to the Trinamool. The Maniktala bypoll has been necessitated by the death of sitting Trinamool MLA Sadhan Pandey in February 2022.Uttarakhand’s Manglaur constituency will witness a three-cornered fight in the bypoll, which is being held after the death of BSP MLA Sarwat Karim Ansari in October last year. The BJP has never won the Muslim- and Dalit-dominated Manglaur seat which has been held either by the Congress or the BSP so far. In the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had won all five seats.In Punjab, the bypoll in the Jalandhar West assembly segment is being seen as a litmus test for Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann. The AAP won only three of the state’s 13 seats in the Lok Sabha elections.