Tamil Nadu Bypolls: DMK To Contest From Vikravandi, Congress From Nanguneri

Chief Election Commissioner, Sunil Arora on Saturday announced the by-election schedules in New Delhi. The by-polls for the two constituencies in Tamil Nadu, namely, Vikravandi and Nanguneri and the Kamaraj Nagar constituency in Puducherry will take place on October 21. The counting of votes will be done on October 24. The schedule of voting for the by-elections is the same as that of the Maharashtra and Haryana Polls.

Putting end to rumours of a possible rift between DMK and Congress over seat-sharing, DMK chief MK Stalin said the party would contest Vikravandi constituency and its ally Congress would field its candidate in Nanguneri constituency and Kamraj Nagar in Puducherry.

The Vikravandi assembly constituency in Villupuram district of Tamil Nadu fell vacant after DMK legislator K Radhamani passed away this June. Similarly, the Nanguneri assembly constituency in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu and Kamraj Nagar in the Union of Pudhucherry fell vacant after HL Vasantha Kumar and V Vaithilingam of the Congress resigned after being elected as the MP from the Kanyakumari and Pudhucherry constituency.

Bypolls to 64 assembly seats and one Lok Sabha constituency spread across 18 states will be held on October 21 and the counting of votes will be 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 will 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 elections and had resigned as members of the state assembly.

The Samastipur (Bihar) 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 will not be held along with the Maharashtra assembly elections on October 21.

Satara MP from Nationalist Congress Party Udayanraje Bhosale had recently joined the Bharatiya Janata Party 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 underway 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 matters are 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 (two each) and Sikkim (3).

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