Maharashtra: Satara Lok Sabha Bypoll To Be Conducted Alongside Assembly Polls On 21 October, Announces EC

The Election Commission (EC) on Tuesday (24 September) announced that the bypoll to Maharashtra's Satara parliamentary constituency will be held on 21 October along with the Assembly elections in the state.

The decision to hold the bypoll was taken after the Bombay High Court decided on an election petition on Satara Lok Sabha elections.

The bypoll was necessitated after Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and sitting MP Udayanraje Bhosale, a descendant of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, resigned as Lok Sabha MP within four months on 14 September and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The poll panel said that the result of the bypoll will be announced on 24 October along with the Assembly election results.

“The High Court sent its communication to the Commission on 23 September and, thus the date for the bypoll has been announced now,” an EC official said.

The Commission said that the notification for the Satara bypoll will be issued on Friday, while the last date for filing nomination will be 4 October.

The scrutiny of the nomination papers will take place on 5 October and the last date for withdrawing candidature is 7 October.

Bhosale, 53, was elected as an MP from Satara thrice -- in 2009, 2014, and 2019.

In this year's Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 23 out of 48 seats in Maharashtra while its alliance partner Shiv Sena managed to win 18 seats. The NCP won four seats while the Congress managed to win only one seat in the state.

On 21 September, the poll panel announced the schedule for the Assembly polls in the state.

The term of the Maharashtra Assembly ends on 9 November. In the 2014 Assembly polls in Maharashtra, the BJP had won 122 seats, its ally Shiv Sena 63 seats, the Congress 42, and the NCP 41 seats while others managed 20. The Congress and the NCP had contested the 2014 polls separately after sharing power for 15 years in the state.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)