UP has the largest number, with Yogi Adityanath seeking to reverse the setback of Lok Sabha polls; a close second is Rajasthan, where Congress had reason to be pleased
Along with the announcement of the Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand, the Election Commission on Tuesday announced the schedule for bypolls to 48 Assembly and two Lok Sabha seats. While the Lok Sabha seats were vacated by the Congress’s Rahul Gandhi, who also contested and won Raebareli, and the death of Vasantrao Chavan in August, most of the Assembly seats fell vacant after the sitting MLAs were elected to the Lok Sabha.
Of the 48 Assembly seats headed for the bypolls, 13 were held by the Congress and 11 by the BJP. The break-up for the others includes five held earlier by the Trinamool Congress (TMC), four by the Samajwadi Party (SP), two each by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM), and one each by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP), CPI(M), CPI(ML)(L), Hindustan Awami Morcha-Secular (HAMS), Janata Dal-United (JD(U)), NISHAD Party, Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLTP), and United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL).
The largest chunk of these bypoll-bound seats are in Uttar Pradesh at nine, followed by Rajasthan at seven; West Bengal at six; Assam at five; Bihar and Punjab at four each; Karnataka at three: Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Sikkim at two each; and Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Meghalaya and Uttarakhand at one each.
The Lok Sabha bypolls are in Kerala for Wayanad and in Maharashtra for Nanded.
Barring Nanded and the Kedarnath Assembly seat, which will vote on November 20, the remaining bypoll seats will vote on November 13. Results will be announced on November 23, along with the Maharashtra and Jharkhand Assembly polls.
Assam
Of the five Assam seats going to bypolls, the BJP had won two, and the Congress, AGP and UPPL one each in 2021. All five seats were won by margins exceeding 20,000 votes.
The Dholai seat, located in the Cachar district of Assam’s primarily Bengali-speaking Barak Valley, is reserved for Scheduled Castes (SCs). The seat became vacant after the five-time MLA Parimal Suklabaidya of the BJP – who was also a minister in the Assam Cabinet – was elected from the Silchar Lok Sabha seat. Suklabaidya had won Dholai in the last two Assembly elections, with the Congress candidate finishing as the runner-up both times.
Samaguri is the only bypoll-bound seat that was held by the Congress in Assam. It fell vacant after Rakibul Hussain – who had represented the seat for five consecutive terms – was elected from the Dhubri Lok Sabha seat. Located in Central Assam’s Nagaon district and with a sizeable minority population, the seat has never been won by the BJP.
The contest in the Bongaigaon seat has opened up for the first time in decades after AGP leader Phani Bhusan Choudhury – who had represented the seat continuously since 1983 – was elected to the Lok Sabha from Barpeta. The AGP is a BJP ally in Assam.
The Scheduled Tribe-reserved Sidli seat, located in the Bodoland Territorial Region, was vacated after UPPL MLA Joyanta Basumatary was elected to the Lok Sabha from Kokrajhar. Before Basumatary’s win in 2021, the seat had been represented by the Bodoland People’s Front for two consecutive terms. The UPPL is also an NDA member.
The Behali seat fell vacant after two-term sitting BJP MLA Ranjit Dutta was elected to the Lok Sabha from Sonitpur.
Bihar
Four Assembly seats in Bihar are headed for bypolls. The Tarari, Ramgarh, Imamganj and Belaganj seats fell vacant after their MLAs were elected to the Lok Sabha. The ruling BJP and JD(U) had won none of these seats in the 2020 Assembly polls, and the JD(U) had finished as the runner-up in Belaganj.
While Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) chief and former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, who represented Imamganj, was elected as the Gaya MP, RJD leader Surendra Prasad Yadav vacated Belaganj after he was elected from the Jehanabad Lok Sabha seat. Ramgarh’s RJD MLA Sudhakar Singh is now the Buxar MP and CPI(ML)(L) leader Sudama Prasad, who had represented Tarari, is now the Arrah MP.
While stakes are high for the RJD to retain its two seats, all eyes are now on political strategist Prashant Kishor’s newly launched Jan Suraaj Party, which is likely to test the political waters by contesting all four seats. Incidentally, the RJD had won Ramgarh in the 2020 Assembly polls by a margin of just 189 votes over the BSP runner-up.
Chhattisgarh
The Raipur City South Assembly seat is the only scheduled bypoll in Chhattisgarh. The BJP’s state minister Brijmohan Agrawal has won this seat in four consecutive polls since the state was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000. In 2023, he had defeated the Congress candidate by more than 67,000 votes. The seat was vacated after Agrawal won the Raipur Lok Sabha seat.
Gujarat
The Vav Assembly seat fell vacant after sitting Congress MLA Geniben Thakor resigned when she got elected to the Lok Sabha from the Banaskantha seat. Thakor, who is now the sole Congress MP from Gujarat, had defeated the BJP by 15,601 votes last time.
Karnataka
Three Assembly seats in Karnataka – Channapatna, Sandur and Shiggoan – will see bypolls after their MLAs resigned following victories in the recent Lok Sabha polls.
The Channapatna seat was vacated by Union Minister and former JD(S) CM H D Kumarasawmy after he won the Mandya Lok Sabha poll while another former CM in BJP’s Basavaraj Bommai and Congress’s E Tukaram won the parliamentary polls from Haveri and Ballari, respectively.
In the 2023 Assembly polls, Kumaraswamy had won Channapatna by a margin of over 15,000 votes while Bommai triumphed from Shiggaon by over 35,000 votes. Tukaram won the Sandur seat by a margin of 35,352 votes. While the Congress was the runner-up in Shiggaon, the BJP placed second in the other seats.
Kerala
The Wayanad Lok Sabha seat was among the two seats that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had contested in the recent Lok Sabha elections. He won it with 3.6 lakh votes alongside Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh, and decided to retain the latter. The limelight will be back on this high-profile seat, with AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi making her electoral debut from here in the coming bypolls.
CPI national leader Annie Raja and BJP state president K Surendran had been Rahul’s rivals in the recent elections. Both parties have not announced their candidates in Wayanad, where the Congress has already begun the ground work to “increase Priyanka’s victory margin”.
The bypoll is being held at a time Wayanad is yet to recover from the devastating landslide of July 30, which killed 251 people and left 47 missing under the debris. The relief measures will be one of the themes of the bypoll.
The Palakkad and Chelakkara Assembly seats will hold bypolls after the incumbent legislators, Shafi Parambil of the Congress and K Radhakrishan of CPI(M), got elected to the Lok Sabha from Vadakara and Alathur, respectively.
In Palakkad, Parambil in the 2021 Assembly polls won by just under 4,000 votes ahead of a rising BJP, which improved its vote share considerably after years of being a minor player in Kerala. In Chelakkara, a CPI(M) stronghold in the Thrissur district, Radhakrishnan had recorded a comfortable victory over the Congress runner-up in 2021.
Madhya Pradesh
The Budhni seat in Sehore district fell vacant after former BJP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan resigned to contest the Lok Sabha polls from Vidhisha. He had been replaced as the CM in last year’s Assembly polls by Mohan Yadav. Chouhan went on to win the Lok Sabha seat with a massive 8 lakh-vote margin and became the Union Agriculture minister. Chouhan, who has won Budhni in consecutive polls since a 2006 bypoll, defeated the Congress’s Vikram Mastal Sharma in 2023 by a margin of 1.04 lakh votes.
In the Vijaypur seat, a bypoll was necessitated after Congress MLA Ramniwas Rawat resigned to join the BJP. He was later named the state forest and environment minister. Rawat, who is a six-time MLA, is a prominent OBC leader in the Chambal region, and won Vijaypur by over 18,000 votes in 2023.
Maharashtra
The Nanded Lok Sabha seat was vacated following the death of sitting Congress MP Vasantrao Chavan. He had defeated the BJP’s giant killer Prataprao Chikhalikar by a margin of over 59,000 votes in the recent Lok Sabha polls. Chikhalikar had won the seat in 2019 by defeating former CM Ashok Chavan, who has since crossed over to the BJP and been nominated to the Rajya Sabha.
Meghalaya
The ST-reserved Gambegre seat in Meghalaya’s Garo Hills became vacant after Congress MLA Saleng Sangma – who represented the seat for three consecutive terms – pulled off a major upset by beating ruling National People’s Party’s (NPP’s) Agatha Sangma in the Tura Lok Sabha seat. In the 2023 Assembly polls, Saleng had defeated the TMC runner-up by 2,871 votes.
With Agatha’s defeat – who is CM Conrad Sangma’s sister – and the NPP wavering by losing both Meghalaya seats in the Lok Sabha elections, the party is seeking to win from this seat by fielding by another member of the Sangma family: Conrad’s wife Mehtab Chandee.
Punjab
Four Assembly constituencies in Punjab – Barnala, Dera Baba Nanak, Chabbewal, and Gidderbaha – are set to hold bypolls. All four bypolls were triggered by the sitting MLAs getting elected to the Lok Sabha.
Barnala, won by the AAP’s youngest state Cabinet minister Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer in 2022 against the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) runner-up, was vacated after Hayer won the Sangrur Lok Sabha seat. Gidderbaha was vacated after state Congress chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring’s election from the Ludhiana Lok Sabha seat. In 2022, Warring had defeated the SAD runner-up by just 1,349 votes in Gidderbaha.
The Congress’s Raj Kumar and Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa had won the Chabbewal and Dera Baba Nanak Assembly seats, respectively, in 2022. In Dera Baba Nanak, Randhawa finished ahead of the SAD runner-up by just 466 votes. Kumar is now the Hoshiarpur MP while Randhawa is the Gurdaspur MP.
Rajasthan
Seven seats will see bypolls in Rajasthan. Of these seven, five were vacated after INDIA alliance members were elected to the Lok Sabha earlier this year.
While Brijendra Singh Ola (Jhunjhunu Assembly seat), Murari Lal Meena (Dausa), Harish Chandra Meena (Deoli-Uniara) were elected to the Lok Sabha on a Congress ticket, Hanuman Beniwal of the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) resigned from Khinwsar Assembly after he was elected from Nagaur Lok Sabha. In the 2023 Assembly polls, the BJP had finished as the runner-up in all four of these seats, although in Khinwsar, Beniwal won by just over 2,000 votes.
Similarly, Rajkumar Roat of the Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP), a Congress ally, resigned as an MLA from Chorasi after he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Banswara. Roat had won by a margin of nearly 70,000 votes in 2023.
The other two seats fell vacant after the demise of the sitting MLA – Zubair Khan of the Congress in Ramgarh and Amrit Lal Meena of BJP from Salumber.
Though the Haryana defeat has hurt the Congress, the party is confident of retaining at least four of these seats but there is no alliance yet with the RLTP or BAP. For CM Bhajan Lal Sharma, it will be seen as a vote on his governance, even though the BJP held only one of these seven seats.
Sikkim
Two Assembly seats have fallen vacant in Sikkim just months after the simultaneous national and state polls. The ruling SKM had won both the seats earlier this year – CM P S Tamang had won Soreng-Chakung but vacated the seat as he also won Rhenock, the other seat he contested, while Krishna Kumari Rai, the CM’s wife won Namchi-Singhithang but resigned just after taking the oath as its MLA. The Opposition Sikkim Democratic Front had finished as the runner-up in both seats.
Uttar Pradesh
UP has the largest chunk of seats headed to bypolls. In 2022, four out of these nine seats were won by the SP, three by the BJP and one each by allies RLD and NISHAD Party. With the BJP looking to regain lost ground from its recent Lok Sabha poll defeat in UP, CM Yogi Adityanath is directly taking command of all these seats for the party, while the Opposition SP and Congress are trying to build on their strong Lok Sabha results.
Notable among them are Karhal, vacated after SP chief and former CM Akhilesh Yadav won the Lok Sabha election from Kannauj. In the 2022 Assembly polls, Akhilesh had won Karhal ahead of the BJP runner-up. The seat is considered an SP stronghold with the party having won it in consecutive polls since 1993.
Sishamau is an exception among these bypoll seats – it was vacated after sitting SP MLA Haji Irfan Solanki was disqualified over his conviction in an arson and assault case. The BJP had finished in second place, over 12,000 votes behind Solanki.
Among the UP seats, the narrowest winning margin in 2022 was in Phulpur, where the BJP’s Praveen Patel defeated the SP candidate by just over 2,700. Patel is now the Lok Sabha MP from Phulpur. The SP, despite its defeats, is known to have a strong presence in this area.
In the Kundarki and Katehari Assembly seats, the SP’s Zia Ur Rehman and Lalji Verma, respectively, had won in 2022. While Rehman vacated the seat after winning the Sambhal Lok Sabha seats, Verma won the Ambedkar Nagar Lok Sabha seat. The BJP and its ally the NISHAD Party were the runners-up in these seats.
The BJP’s Atul Garg and Anoop Pradhan had won the Ghaziabad and SC-reserved Khair Assembly seats in 2022. Garg was later elected from the Ghaziabad Lok Sabha seat and the Pradhan from Hathras, leaving the two seats vacant.
The Majhawan and Meerapur Assembly seats were won by the NISHAD Party and RLD, both now BJP allies, in the 2022 polls, respectively. While Vinod Kumar Bind vacated Majhawan after winning the Bhadohi Lok Sabha seat, Chandan Chauhan vacated Meerapur after becoming the Bijnor MP. Notably, in 2022, Chauhan had defeated a BJP candidate to win Meerapur, located in the RLD’s stronghold of West UP.
Notably, the vacant Milkipur Assembly seat did not find mention in the EC’s announcement on Tuesday. The SP’s Awadesh Kumar had won the seat, which falls in the Ayodhya district, in 2022 against the BJP by just over 13,000 votes.
Uttarakhand
Sitting BJP MLA Shaila Rawat’s death in July has necessitated the bypoll in the Kedarnath Assembly seat. Rawat had defeated her nearest rival and Independent candidate, Kuldeep Rawat, by a margin of just over 8,000 votes in the 2022 Assembly polls.
West Bengal
Six Assembly seats are set to hold bypolls in West Bengal including Sitai, Madarihat, Naihati, Haroa, Medinipur and Taldangra. While Sitai is SC-reserved, Madarihat is an ST seat. Of these six seats, the TMC bagged five seats in the 2021 Assembly poll while the BJP won one.
North Bengal’s Sitai became vacant after TMC MLA Jagadish Chandra Basunia was elected to the Lok Sabha from Coochbehar. He defeated the BJP’s former Union Minister of State Nisith Pramanik by just over 10,000 votes.
Also in North Bengal, Madarihat was won for a second consecutive term by BJP leader Manoj Tigga in 2021, finishing ahead of the TMC runner-up. He resigned as an MLA after he won the Lok Sabha poll from Alipurduar.
The remaining four seats are in South Bengal. In Naihati, former state minister Partha Bhowmick had defeated the BJP candidate to become the MLA. The seat was vacated after Bhowmick won the Lok Sabha election from Barrackpore.
The Medinipur Assembly seat was vacated by the TMC’s June Maliah, who won the Medinipur Lok Sabha seats in the recent general elections. In 2021, Maliah had defeated the BJP’s runner-up by over 24,000 votes.
In Haroa, TMC leader Sk. Nurul Islam (Haji) won the 2021 Assembly bypoll against by a margin of over 2 lakh votes. The seat was vacated after he was elected from the Basirhat Lok Sabha seat. However, after his death in September, the Basirhat Lok Sabha seat has also become vacant.
In Taldangra, TMC leader Arup Chakraborty became the MLA in 2021 after winning by a margin of nearly 2 lakh votes. The seat fell vacant after Chakraborty defeated former Union Minister of State Subhash Sarkar from the Bankura Lok Sabha seat.
