Bypolls in Wayanad LS, 31 Assembly seats today

Jaipur/Kolkata: Bypolls will be held on Wednesday in 31 assembly seats spread across 10 states and Kerala's Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, from where Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her electoral debut. Though these bye-elections are not going to have any bearing on the governments, they are seen as a big test for the Congress and the INDIA bloc which failed to put up a united show in the recent Haryana assembly polls.

Most of these seats fell vacant after the sitting MLAs contested the Lok Sabha elections and won while in some constituencies, the bypolls are being held due to death of the representatives. The Wayanad seat was vacated by Rahul Gandhi, who also won from the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency which he kept.

Voting will be held in seven seats in Rajasthan, six in West Bengal, five in Assam, four seats in Bihar, three in Karnataka, two seats in Madhya Pradesh, and one seat each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala and Meghalaya.

Votes will be counted on November 23. Though polling was also scheduled for two seats in Sikkim -- Soreng-Chakung and Namchi-Singhithang, Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) nominees Aditya Golay and Satish Chandra Rai have already been declared unopposed after their rivals withdrew from the race. Priyanka Gandhi, pitted against LDF's Sathyan Mokeri, NDA's Navya Haridas and 13 others in Wayanad, faces a key test -- not only to hold onto the party's stronghold but also to widen the victory margin her brother, Rahul Gandhi, achieved in the last two elections.