The seat in Dumri was vacated after the death of Jagarnath Mahto, who had been the Dumri MLA since 2005 when Jharkhand’s first Assembly poll as a separate state was held. Mahto, a member of the Chief Minister Hemant Soren-led Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, had won the seat in the 2019 Assembly polls. The JMM, now an INDIA bloc member, is fielding Mahto’s wife Bebi Devi this time. The NDA has campaigned heavily in this seat, with visits from Union ministers Arjun Munda and Annapurna Devi, and former Chief Ministers Babulal Marandi and Raghubar Das, in an attempt to wrest the constituency from the JMM. Results in this bypoll won’t immediately impact the Assembly composition, with the JMM-led ruling coalition holding 49 of the 80 total seats
In Kerala’s Puthuppally, the bye-election was called after the death of the Congress’s Oommen Chandy, a two-time Chief Minister and the Puthuppally MLA since 1970. A Congress bastion, the only time it had a non-Congress MLA was in 1967 when the CPI(M) won the seat. In the 2021 Assembly polls, Chandy had won the seat for the 12th consecutive time, defeating the CPI(M)’s Jaick C Thomas in a close contest, by just over 9,000 votes. The Congress, which leads the Opposition United Democratic Front in the Kerala government, named Chandy’s son, 37-year-old Youth Congress leader Chandy Oommen as its candidate. The CPI(M), which leads the Left Democratic Front government in the state, fielded Thomas again, in the hopes that he can further cut into the Congress’s vote share.
Just months after the Assembly elections in Tripura, two seats–Dhanpur and Boxanagar— saw bypolls in the state – one necessitated by the death of an MLA and the other by a resignation. Both seats featured a straight contest between the CPI(M) and BJP while the Congress backed the CPI(M).
In Uttarakhand, a year after the Assembly polls, the Bageshwar seat witnessed a bypoll following the death of sitting BJP MLA Chandan Ram Dass. Dass, a four-time MLA and minister with the portfolios of Social Welfare, Minority Welfare, Road Transport, and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, had won in the 2022 polls for a fourth consecutive time after defeating the Congress’s Ranjeet Das by more than 12,000 votes.
In UP’s Ghosi, the bypoll was called after serial party-hopper Dara Singh Chauhan resigned as the Samajwadi Party’s Ghosi MLA to rejoin the BJP earlier this year. In the 2022 Assembly polls, Chauhan won the Ghosi seat as an SP candidate, defeating the BJP’s Vijay Kumar Rajbhar by more than 22,000 votes. This time, the BJP fielded Dass’s wife Parwati in a direct contest against the Congress’s Basant Kumar. In a test of Opposition unity, the Samajwadi Party (SP), despite being a Congress ally in the INDIA bloc, fielded a candidate, Bhagawati Prasad. The Congress has opted not to field a candidate and is backing its INDIA partner, even though the SP refused to withdraw its candidate in Uttarakhand’s Bageshwar by-poll
In 2021, the BJP made its first significant foray into the West Bengal Assembly, winning 77 seats compared with just 3 in the previous election. In Dhupguri, the BJP’s Bishnu Pada Ray defeated the Trinamool Congress’s Mitali Roy by a narrow 4,300-vote margin. The constituency saw a bypoll after Ray’s death in July. The BJP fielded Tapasi Roy, the widow of CRPF jawan Jagannath Roy who was killed in a terrorist attack in Kashmir in 2021. Both the Trinamool and CPI(M) fielded new candidates for the bypoll. With the Congress backing the CPI(M) against the TMC, the bypoll saw a contest between INDIA bloc members.
