EC announces bypolls to 64 Assembly seats, one Lok Sabha constituency

New Delhi, September 21

Bypolls to 64 Assembly seats and one Lok Sabha constituency spread across 18 states would be held on October 21 and the counting of votes would be done 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 byolls 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 election and had resigned as members of the state Assembly.

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

Responding to a question, Arora said the bypoll to the Satara Lok Sabha seat would not be held along with the Maharashtra Assembly elections on October 21.

Satara MP from Nationalist Congress Party Udayanraje Bhosale had recently joined the BJP after resigning from the Lok Sabha.

Assembly bypolls in West Bengal are not being held now as the state government had cited the Durga Puja festivities to postpone the exercise. They will also not be held in Uttarakhand now as panchayat elections are already under way and the state machinery is occupied with the exercise, Arora said.

In some other seats, by-elections are not being held as respective high courts are hearing election petitions and the matter is sub judice, he added.

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 (2 each) and Sikkim (3).

The notification for the one Lok Sabha bypoll and 64 Assembly by-elections will be issued on September 23. The nomination process will begin the same day. PTI