EC announces bypoll dates to Asansol LS seat vacated by Babul Supriyo, 4 assembly constituencies on Apr 12

The by-elections will be held on April 12 for the Asansol Lok Sabha seat and Ballygunge assembly seat in West Bengal. The three other assembly constituencies which will go to bypolls on the same date are Khairagarh in Chhattisgarh, Bochahan in Bihar, and Kolhapur North in Maharashtra.

The by-elections to Asansol parliamentary constituency were necessitated after former BJP leader Babul Supriyo vacated the seat as he quit the saffron party and joined Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress in September last year.

Supriyo had won the Asansol seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections defeating Trinamool Congress candidate Moonmoon Sen.

However, he failed to win the Tollygunge seat in the 2021 assembly elections in Mar-Apr. Later, he was stripped of his ministry in a cabinet reshuffle of the Modi government at the Centre.

The by-election to the Ballygunge assembly seat will be held following the death of TMC MLA and cabinet minister in Mamata Banerjee government Subrata Mukherjee on November 4 last year.

Bochaha assembly seat in Bihar fell vacant after the demise of sitting MLA Musafir Paswan of the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) in November of last year.

The bypoll to the Kolhapur North assembly seat in Maharashtra, meanwhile, was necessitated by the death of sitting Congress MLA Chandrakant Jadhav in December of last year.

According to the Election Commission's notification, the last date of nomination is March 24 while the date of scrutiny of nominations is March 25.

The counting of votes will be held on April 16.