After the high-stakes Lok Sabha Polls, voting in the assembly by-election is underway across 13 Assembly seats in Punjab, Himachal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Bengal, Uttarakhand, and Tamil Nadu. This is the second major electoral battle between the NDA and INDIA bloc. Vacancies in these Assembly segments were created either due to the deaths or the resignations of the MLAs.

The 13 seats witnessing polling today are--Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin, Bagda and Maniktala (West Bengal); Badrinath and Manglaur (Uttarakhand); Jalandhar West (Punjab); Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh (Himachal Pradesh); Rupauli (Bihar); Vikravandi (Tamil Nadu) and Amarwara (Madhya Pradesh).

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The contest for the Jalandhar West seat in Punjab and the Rupali seat in Bihar has become quite significant. In Punjab, where Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has rented a house in Jalandhar and set up a temporary residence for the by-election, the Rupali seat in Bihar is witnessing a direct contest between JD(U) and RJD amid changed equations after Nitish Kumar’s coalition with the NDA.

In West Bengal, the BJP and the ruling TMC are contesting all four assembly seats. Three of these constituencies were won by the BJP in 2021 but were vacated due to defections to the TMC. The fourth seat, Maniktala, fell vacant following the death of sitting TMC MLA Sadhan Pandey.

Three seats in Himachal Pradesh--Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh-- are also witnessing the polls. Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife, Kamlesh Thakur, is contesting the election from Dehra.

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In Uttarakhand, two assembly seats are heading to bypolls - Badrinath, a holy site with a Char Dham shrine, and Manglaur, a Muslim-majority constituency. Former Congress MLA Rajendra Bhandari, now with the BJP, is contesting from Badrinath against Congress' Lakhpat Butolat. In Manglaur, the Congress has fielded senior leader Qazi Nizamuddin against the BJP's Kartar Singh Bhadana.

The vote counting will take place on July 13.