Bhopal/Lucknow/Ahmedabad: Counting of votes would be held on Tuesday in assembly byelection to 58 seats in 11 states including Madhya Pradesh where the results would decide the fate of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government.
The counting will begin at 8 AM as per the Election Commission’s COVID-19 guidelines which restrict the number of people who can be present in the counting halls, officials said, adding extensive measures have been taken to ensure social distancing.
The stakes are high for both the BJP and the Congress in the byelections, considered a litmus test for the parties.
While the ruling BJP needs at least eight more MLAs for a simple majority in the MP Assembly, the Congress will be hoping to regain its turf as it had sitting MLAs in 27 seats out of 28 in the state where bypolls were held.
Overall, the Congress had sitting MLAs in 42 seats out of 58, while the BJP had seven. The saffron party is fielding over 30 candidates who had won from the Congress ticket but switched sides and resigned, necessitating the bypolls.
In Uttar Pradesh, it will a test of popularity for the Yogi Adityanath government as the BJP, which has a comfortable majority in the Assembly, is contesting on seven seats six of which it had won in the last election while one was with the Samajwadi Party.
Counting of votes will be held in eight seats in Gujarat, four seats in Manipur and one seat in Haryana, all of which were with the Congress; one seat in Chhattisgarh which was with Ajit Jogi’s Janata Congress; two seats in Jharkhand which were held by the Congress and its ally JMM; and two seats in Karnataka which were with Congress and the JD(S).
In Jharkhand, Chief Minister Hemant Soren’s home turf Dumka is seeing a contest between his younger brother Basant Soren and former cabinet minister Lois Marandi of the BJP.
It is expected to be a straight fight between BJP’s Yogeshwar Mahato and Anup Singh of the Congress in Bermo seat in Bokaro district. (PTI)
