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Himachal Pradesh Assembly Bypolls Underway
Polling Begins for 3 Assembly Seats in Himachal Pradesh
Shimla: Polling for three Assembly constituencies—Dehra, Nalagarh, and Hamirpur—started on Wednesday across 315 polling stations, with 13 candidates competing in the bypoll. A total of 2.59 lakh electorates will cast their votes until 6 p.m.
These bypolls are being held to fill vacancies created by the resignation of incumbent members. The ballots will be counted on July 13.
In a direct contest between the traditional rivals, the Congress and the BJP, the stakes are particularly high for Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, whose wife Kamlesh Thakur is making her electoral debut from Dehra in Kangra district. This constituency, created after delimitation in 2010, has never been won by the Congress.
Chief Minister Sukhu has campaigned vigorously in Dehra, compared to the other two seats, to ensure victory for Kamlesh Thakur, who is running against BJP nominee Hoshiyar Singh, an Independent candidate who won the seat twice in 2022. In 2012, BJP’s Ravinder Singh Ravi was elected from Dehra. Sukhu appealed to voters by suggesting that electing his wife would essentially give Dehra a “Chief Minister.”
The main opposition BJP, which has recently won all four seats in the parliamentary elections, has fielded K.L. Thakur from Nalagarh and Ashish Sharma from Hamirpur, who are competing against Congress candidates Hardeep Bawa and Pushpendra Verma, respectively. Both K.L. Thakur and Ashish Sharma won their seats as Independent candidates in 2022 before joining the BJP earlier this year. Along with Hoshiyar Singh, they resigned from the Assembly in March and joined the BJP, prompting these bypolls.
Earlier, the Speaker accepted their resignations on June 4, leading to the current bypolls. The Congress had won four out of six bypolls on June 4, providing a major reprieve to the state government, although it lost all four Lok Sabha seats to the BJP for the third consecutive time. With four new legislators, the Congress has stabilized its government in the state, currently holding 38 MLAs in the Assembly House of 65, while the BJP has 27.
Assembly Bypolls: Voting Begins In 13 Seats Across 7 States, Including Bengal, Punjab, And Tamil Nadu
Voting for bypolls in 13 assembly constituencies across seven states commenced on Wednesday, marking the first electoral exercise since the conclusion of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in June. The constituencies include Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin, Bagda, and Maniktala (West Bengal); Dehra, Hamirpur, and Nalagarh (Himachal Pradesh); Badrinath and Manglaur (Uttarakhand); Jalandhar West (Punjab); Rupauli (Bihar); Vikravandi (Tamil Nadu); and Amarwara (Madhya Pradesh).
The voting began at 7 am and will continue until 6 pm across all constituencies.
WEST BENGAL
In West Bengal, three constituencies—Maniktala in Kolkata, Ranaghat Dakshin, and Bagda in North 24 Parganas—are in the southern part of the state. The fourth, Raiganj, is in the northern part of Bengal’s Uttar Dinajpur district. There are approximately 10 lakh voters across these four assembly segments.
The Election Commission (EC) has deployed about 70 companies of security forces to safeguard 1,097 polling booths across the four assembly seats. The counting of votes will take place on July 13.
BIHAR
In Bihar, over three lakh voters will decide the fate of 11 candidates. The bypoll was necessitated by the resignation of sitting MLA Bima Bharti, who had won the seat for JD(U) multiple times but resigned to contest this year’s general elections on an RJD ticket. She lost her deposit in the parliamentary election and is now contesting the bypoll again as an RJD candidate. JD(U) has fielded Kaladhar Prasad Mandal, who contested the 2020 assembly polls from Rupauli as an Independent. Former MLA Shankar Singh, who had quit the LJP (Ram Vilas) led by Union minister Chirag Paswan, is also contesting as an Independent
