The Election Commission on June 10 announced bypolls to 13 Assembly constituencies across seven states, including four in West Bengal, on July 10.
The bypolls are to be held against vacancies created either due to deaths or resignation of incumbent members.
The Assembly seats going for bypolls are Rupauli (Bihar), Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin, Bagda and Maniktala (all West Bengal), Vikravandi (Tamil Nadu), Amarwara (Madhya Pradesh), Badrinath and Manglaur (Uttarakhand), Jalandhar West (Punjab) and Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh (Himachal Pradesh).
Most number of seats are from West Bengal, that is, four.
In three of the four Assembly constituencies, Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs had joined the ruling Trinamool Congress and unsuccessfully contested the just-concluded Lok Sabha elections. These seats are Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin and Bagdah.
In the first segment, BJP MLA Krishna Kalyani joined the TMC but lost the Lok Sabha polls for the Raiganj seat to BJP candidate Kartik Paul.
Biswajit Das had quit the TMC to join the BJP ahead of the 2021 Assembly elections. After being elected from Bagdah, however, he returned to the TMC.
In the Lok Sabha elections, he was defeated by the BJP’s Shantanu Thakur in the Bongaon constituency.
Just before the Lok Sabha elections, another BJP MLA, Mukut Mani Adhikari, joined the TMC and was fielded as the candidate for the Ranaghat seat, but he lost to the BJP’s sitting MP, Jagannath Sarkar.
The fourth Assembly bypoll will be held for the Maniktala seat, which fell vacant after the demise of TMC veteran and minister Sadhan Pandey.
As per the votes polled in the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP was ahead of its rivals in the first three Assembly segments while the TMC was ahead in Maniktala but by only 3,500 votes.
The notification for the elections will be issued on June 14, the last date for filing of nomination papers is June 21, the poll papers will be scrutinised on June 24 and the last date for withdrawal of nomination papers is June 26.
The bypolls will be held on July 10 and the counting of votes will be on July 13.
The Election Commission said the bypolls have to be completed before July 15
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