Election Commission announces bypolls to 64 assembly seats one Lok Sabha constituency

NEW DELHI: 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.nnWhile assembly by-elections will be held on 64 assembly seats, the Samastipur Lok Sabha constituency in Bihar will also have a bypoll.nnThese assembly seats include 15 in Karnataka and 11 in Uttar Pradesh.nnChief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said the byolls in Karnataka will be held on seats, including where sitting MLAs were disqualified recently.nnThe 11 UP assembly seats mostly belong to MLAs who had won the Lok Sabha elections and had resigned as members of the state assembly.nnThe Samastipur (Bihar) Lok Sabha by-election was necessitated following the death of sitting MP Ram Chandra Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party in July.nnResponding 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.nnSatara MP from Nationalist Congress Party Udayanraje Bhosale had recently joined the Bharatiya Janata Party after resigning from the Lok Sabha.nnAssembly 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.nnIn 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.nnStates where assembly bypolls will be held are Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Odisha and Puducherry (one seat each).nnThe 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).nnThe 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.nnSource: Press Trust of India