The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday announced the bypolls for 13 Legislative Assembly seats across seven states, including the Jalandhar West constituency in Punjab. Voting will occur on July 10, and the counting will occur on June 13. The Jalandhar West (Scheduled Caste-reserved) became vacant after the resignation of the sitting Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA, Sheetal Angural, who defected to the BJP on March 27, along with the then AAP Lok Sabha MP from Jalandhar, Sushil Kumar Rinku. According to the ECI's notification, the gazette Notification will be issued on June 14. Nomination papers can be filed from June 14 to June 21, with scrutiny of nominations scheduled for June 24. The last date for withdrawal of nominations is June 26. On June 2, a day after Punjab voted in the seventh and final phase of Lok Sabha elections 2024, Angural expressed a change of heart and requested the AAP to reconsider his membership. However, the party refused, stating that his resignation had already been accepted. In Punjab, bypolls to four other Assembly constituencies are also required, but their schedule has yet to be announced. In Chabbewal (SC) in Hoshiarpur, Dr Raj Kumar Chabbewal quit the Congress and joined the AAP ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. Subsequently, he won the Hoshiarpur Lok Sabha seat. Dera Baba Nanak became vacant after Congress MLA Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa won a Lok Sabha seat from Gurdaspur. The Assembly seat of AAP MLA and minister Gurmeet Singh Hayer in Barnala fell vacant after he became an MP from Sangrur. At the same time, the seat of Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring in Gidderbaha fell vacant after he won the Lok Sabha polls from Ludhiana. Bihar (1), West Bengal (4), Tamil Nadu (1), Madhya Pradesh (1), Uttarakhand (2) and Himachal Pradesh (3) are the other six states that will witness Assembly bypolls on July 10.
