Counting begins at 8 am and results are usually expected by noon. (Image for representation)
New Delhi:
Vote counting for seven assembly seats across six states will be held today with results set to be pitched as a wider message by whoever wins. A family legacy is on the line in Haryana, and prestige battles are being fought in Bihar and Maharashtra.
Here are 10 points that encapsulate what these elections mean:
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Of the seven seats, the BJP held three, the Congress two, while the Shiv Sena and the RJD had one each before bypolls were necessitated. Two of these seats are in Bihar, and one each in UP, Haryana, Maharashtra, Telangana and Odisha.
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Bihar is seeing the first contest – on two seats – since Nitish Kumar dumped the BJP to revive the JDU’s alliance with Tejashwi Yadav’s RJD. In Mokama, RJD’s Neelam Devi will look to retain the seat earlier held by her husband Anant Singh, a strongman-politician disqualified after being convicted of illegally keeping guns.
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On Bihar’s other seat, Gopalganj, the RJD is hoping to oust the BJP which has held it for nearly two decades now. It has put up Mohan Prasad Gupta, from among the older party cadre, against the BJP’s Kusum Devi, whose husband Subhas Singh’s death necessitated the election.
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In Haryana, former chief minister Bhajan Lal’s family seat Admapur will decide whether his grandson Bhavya Bishnoi can carry the 68-year legacy forward after switching from the Congress to BJP. Bhavya’s father Kuldeep Bishnoi, who led the family into the BJP, resigned as Adampur MLA as he defected, leading to this bypoll.
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Maharashtra’s Andheri East is seeing two firsts. It’s the first poll fight after Shiv Sena was cleaved into two as Eknath Shinde unseated Uddhav Thackeray to become Chief Minister with BJP’s help. And it’s the first in decades that the Thackerays-led Sena is fighting with a new name – Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) – and a new symbol, the ‘mashaal’ or flaming torch.
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But Andheri won’t be much of a contest as the BJP withdrew its candidate as part of “political tradition” in polls necessitated by a leader’s death. Team Thackeray has put up Rutuja Latke, whose husband Ramesh Latke’s death led to the contest.
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In Telangana, Munugode saw the ruling TRS and its sworn rival BJP fight it out on the ground and made allegations involving “crores of rupees” – especially given Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s ambition to set up a challenge to PM Narendra Modi in 2024. Here the Congress MLA had resigned and is now fighting on the BJP ticket.
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In Odisha’s Dhamnagar, too, the ruling regional party BJD is facing the BJP. The BJP won it last time but MLA Bishnu Charan Sethi’s death led to this contest. It has fielded his son.
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In its stronghold UP, the BJP is seeking to retain the Gola Gokarannath seat, which fell vacant after the death of its MLA Arvind Giri on September 6. The BSP and Congress are keeping away, so it’s a direct fight between Arvind Giri’s son Aman Giri (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party’s Vinay Tiwari, a former MLA.
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None of these contests is likely to upset the math for current state governments. But, with regional parties looking to put together a united front for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections – just a year and a half away – these could serve as booster shots, or perception busters, depending on the results.
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