Assembly bypolls to 13 seats in seven states to be held today

New Delhi: Bypolls to 13 Assembly constituencies in seven states will be held today. The electoral exercise, the first since the Lok Sabha elections, will decide the fate of many veterans and some debutantes including Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife Kamlesh Thakur.

The Assembly seats going to polls are Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin, Bagda and Maniktala (West Bengal); Badrinath and Manglaur (Uttarakhand); Jalandhar West (Punjab); Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh (Himachal Pradesh); Rupauli (Bihar); Vikravandi (Tamil Nadu) and Amarwara (Madhya Pradesh). The bypolls are to be held against vacancies created either due to deaths or resignation of incumbent members.

In West Bengal, the stakes are high for both the ruling TMC, which is looking to capitalise on its improved performance in the Lok Sabha polls, and the BJP, which is seeking to leverage the significant leads it made in the four constituencies in the Parliamentary polls.

The TMC won Maniktala seat in the 2021 West Bengal elections while the BJP won Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin and Bagda. Later, the BJP MLAs switched to the TMC.

The Maniktala bypoll was necessitated by the death of sitting TMC MLA Sadhan Pandey in February 2022.

The TMC has fielded Pandey’s wife Supti from the seat. The ruling party has fielded Krishna Kalyani from Raiganj and Mukut Mani Adhikari from Ranaghat Dakshin.

In Badgah, a Matua-majority constituency, the TMC has fielded Madhuparna Thakur, a member of the Matua Thakurbari and daughter of party Rajya Sabha MP Mamatabala Thakur. Kalyani, Adhikari and Biswajit Das had unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha polls on TMC tickets after resigning from the BJP.

The BJP has fielded All India Football Federation president Kalyan Chaubey from Maniktala, Manoj Kumar Biswas from Ranaghat Dakshin, Binay Kumar Biswas from Bagdah and Manas Kumar Ghosh from Raiganj. Buoyed by its Lok Sabha poll performance, the TMC hopes to win all four Assembly seats.

“We are confident of winning all four Assembly seats. The people of Bengal have rejected the BJP in the last Lok Sabha polls,” said TMC leader Kunal Ghosh.

The TMC won 29 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, up from 22 in the 2019 Parliamentary polls. On the other hand, the BJP’s tally came down to 12 from 18 in 2019. In Himachal Pradesh, bypolls will be held for three Assembly constituencies -- Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh.