NEW DELHI, Sept 29 - The Election Commission has decided not to hold byelections in Rangapara and Sivasagar assembly constituencies in Assam even as it announced that bypolls to one Lok Sabha and 56 assembly seats spread across 12 states will be held on November 3 and 7.
The Rangapara and Sivasagar seats had fallen vacant after death of Rajen Borthakur (BJP) and Pranab Gogoi (Congress) respectively.
EC sources said that chief secretaries of five states where polls are due in the near future wrote to the Chief Election Commissioner requesting the poll panel not to hold the byelections citing the COVID crisis. The EC after due deliberations agreed and decided not to hold polls in the five states, sources added.
The five states scheduled to go to polls in 2021 are Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. The term of assemblies in these states will expire in April-May.
However, elsewhere in the Northeast byelections will be held in two assembly constituencies each in Manipur and Nagaland.
The EC said that after taking into consideration various factors like local festivals, weather conditions, movement of forces, COVID-19 pandemic, etc., it decided to hold byelections to fill vacancies.
The states where byelections will be held are Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland, Odisha, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh. The counting will be undertaken on November 10.
