EC announces bypolls to 64 assembly seats, one LS constituency

New Delhi: Bypolls to 64 assembly seats and one Lok Sabha constituency spread across 18 states will be held on October 21, and the counting of votes will be on October 24, the Election Commission announced on Saturday.

While assembly by-elections will be held on 64 assembly seats, the Samastipur Lok Sabha constituency in Bihar will also have a bypoll.

These assembly seats include 15 in Karnataka and 11 in Uttar Pradesh.

Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said the bypolls in Karnataka would be held on seats, including where sitting MLAs were disqualified recently.

The 11 UP assembly seats mostly belong to MLAs who had won the Lok Sabha elections and had resigned as members of the state assembly.

The Samastipur (Bihar) Lok Sabha by-election was necessitated following the death of sitting MP Ram Chandra Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party in July.

Assembly bypolls in West Bengal are not being held now as the state government had cited the Durga Puja festivities for postponing the exercise.

States, where assembly bypolls will be held, are Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Odisha and Puducherry (one seat each).

The other states are Assam (4), Bihar (5), Gujarat (4), Himachal Pradesh (2), Kerala (5), Punjab (4), Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu (two each) and Sikkim (3).