Bhopal/Lucknow/Ahmedabad: Campaigning ended on Sunday for by-elections to 54 assembly constituencies in 10 states including 28 seats in Madhya Pradesh where the high-stake contest that will decide the fate of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government saw the parties launching vitriolic attacks against each other.
There was hectic canvassing for the Tuesday by-elections in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Election Commission (EC) restricting the number of star campaigners and issuing strict guidelines for gatherings.
The main contenders, BJP and Congress, traded barbs especially in Madhya Pradesh where the EC had to reprimand leaders of both the parties and even revoked the star campaigner status of former chief minister Kamal Nath, who challenged it in the Supreme Court.
In over 30 seats in MP, Gujarat and Karnataka, the BJP has fielded former Congress MLAs who quit to join the saffron party.
The BJP, which has a comfortable majority in the UP Assembly, is locked in a battle of prestige on seven seats, with the opposition taking on the Yogi Adityanath government on the law and order issue.
In Gujarat, the bypolls are being held in eight seats after the Congress MLAs resigned. Five of them later joined the ruling BJP and are contesting again.
Assembly bypolls will also be held in Chhattisgarh (1 seat), Haryana (1), Jharkhand (2), Karnataka (2), Nagaland (2), Odisha (2) and Telangana (1).
Chief Minister Chouhan and Rajya Sabha member Jyotiraditya Scindia, whose move to desert the Congress along with his supporters resulted in the fall of the Kamal Nath government, led the efforts to drum up support for the BJP nominees in MP.
By-elections are being held in 25 seats in MP as sitting Congress MLAs resigned and joined the BJP. They are now in the fray as BJP candidates, while in three other seats the by-election was necessitated due to the demise of the sitting legislators.
For the first time in the history of the state, 28 Assembly seats in the 230-member House are going to bypolls in one go. A total of 355 candidates, including 12 state ministers, are in the fray.
The ruling BJP currently has 107 MLAs and needs nine more seats for a majority, while the Congress has 87 legislators in the House.
In Uttar Pradesh, of the seven seats going to the polls on Tuesday, six were held by the BJP and one by the Samajwadi Party.
The state government faced criticism over the law and order situation, particularly after the Hathras and Balrampur rape and murder cases.
Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati too on Sunday appealed to voters to vote for her party candidates and send a political message to rivals.
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and Deputy CM Dushyant Chautala held joint public meetings in the Baroda assembly constituency and urged people to vote for BJP-JJP candidate Yogeshwar Dutt. (PTI)