Assembly election: Voting was underway albeit slowly in the two significant assembly seats of Suar and Chhanbey in Uttar Pradesh, Jharsuguda in Odisha, as well as Sohiong in Meghalaya. Voting also began for one Lok Sabha seat in Punjab.
Polls were necessitated in Jalandhar Lok Sabha as the seat fell vacant after the death of Congress MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary. He suffered a cardiac arrest during the party’s Bharat Jodo Yatra in Jalandhar’s Phillaur in January this year.
Four cornered contest
According to reports, there is expected to be a four-cornered contest with the AAP, BJP, Congress, and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) vying to outgun each other in what is considered a Dalit stronghold.
Among those contesting elections include Congress’ Karamjit Kaur, the wife of Santokh Chaudhary, ex-MLA Sushil Rinku, who quit the Congress and joined the BJP, and Inder Iqbal Singh Atwal, a Dalit Sikh, who quit the Shiromani Akali Dal only to join the saffron party.
Stiff confrontation in UP’s Suar, Chhanbey
In Uttar Pradesh’s Suar and Chhanbey seats, there is a stiff confrontation between the ruling alliance and the opposition Samajwadi Party. While the results will have no particular impact on the seat configuration of the assembly, but it will test the waters for the Samajwadi Party in the absence of Mulayam Singh Yadav, the party patriarch who passed away recently. Whoever wins the battle, will score a moral victory before the Lok Sabha poll scheduled next year.
The Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party has decided to not contest the by-elections. Meanwhile, in Meghalaya, polling is underway in Sohiong, where a bypoll was announced due to the death of UDP candidate HDR Lyngdoh ahead of the assembly elections held in the rest of the state on February 27. Polling was postponed due to the incumbent’s death.
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