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The counting of votes for bye-elections in six Assembly constituencies in five states including the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh will be held on Thursday.
The polling was held on December 5 in six assembly seats in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Rampur Sadar and Khatauli in Uttar Pradesh, Padampur in Odisha, Sardarshahar in Rajasthan, Kurhani in Bihar, and Bhanupratappur in Chhattisgarh are the assembly seats where results will be declared today. A high-stakes contest was witnessed in Mainpuri seat, where the by-election was necessitated by the demise of Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav in October. Mulayam Singh Yadav's elder daughter-in-law and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav's wife Dimple Yadav is the SP candidate in Mainpuri, while BJP has pitted Raghuraj Singh Shakya, a former confidant of Mulayam's brother Shivpal Singh Yadav. Notably, the Mainpuri seat is considered a stronghold of the Samajwadi Party. The bypolls Rampur Sadar and Khatauli were necessitated after SP MLA Azam Khan and BJP MLA Vikram Singh Saini were disqualified in separate cases. Notably, Khan was disqualified in a hate speech case and the BJP MLA Saini after his conviction and sentence of two-year imprisonment in a 2013 riot case was also disqualified. In Khatauli, the BJP is trying to retain the seat by fielding Rajkumari Saini. She is the wife of Vikram Singh Saini. With the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) distanced themselves from the bypolls in Uttar Pradesh, it would be a direct fight between the BJP and Samajwadi Party and its ally Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD). An anticipated direct contest between Congress and BJP is expected at the Bhanupratappur seat after Congress MLA Manoj Singh Mandavi passed away last month. The Congress has fielded Savitri Mandavi, the wife of the deceased MLA in a bid to retain the seat while BJP has fielded a former MLA. The seat is reserved for Scheduled Tribes. In other states, the Padampur bypoll of Odisha was also necessitated following the demise of sitting BJD MLA Bijay Ranjan Singh Bariha on October 3. Rajasthan's Sardarshahar seat goes to polls following the death of Congress MLA Bhanwar Lal Sharma after a prolonged illness. His seat was contested by his son Anil Kumar while BJP had fielded former MLA Ashok Kumar there. In Bihar's Kurhani, the disqualification of RJD MLA Anil Kumar Sahani has prompted the polls. (ANI)
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