NEW DELHI: The Election Commission of India has announced a bypoll to Assam’s Nagaon Lok Sabha seat but deferred elections to two other vacant parliamentary constituencies, Basirhat in West Bengal and Shillong in Meghalaya, citing a pending election petition and the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Voting for Nagaon will be held on October 6, with counting scheduled for October 9. The seat fell vacant after former Congress MP Pradyut Bordoloi resigned from the Lok Sabha following his switch to the BJP and subsequent election to the Assam Assembly.
Senior EC officials said the Basirhat bypoll could not be announced as an election petition challenging the election of TMC’s SK Nurul Islam is still pending before the Calcutta High Court.
Islam, who won the Basirhat seat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, died on September 25 last year, months after taking the oath as an MP. The petition challenging his election was not withdrawn and continues to be heard.
The officials said the case includes a “second prayer”, under which the petitioner has sought not only to have the returned candidate’s election declared void but also to be declared duly elected.
Under election law, an election can be challenged before the concerned high court within 45 days of the declaration of results.
The Shillong seat has been vacant since Voice of the People’s Party MP Ricky Andrew Syngkon died on February 19 this year. The EC has cited the ongoing SIR in Meghalaya as the reason for deferring the bypoll.
The final electoral rolls in Meghalaya are scheduled to be published on October 21.
The Nagaon bypoll was necessitated after Bordoloi quit Congress in March and joined the BJP ahead of the Assam Assembly elections. He subsequently resigned as Lok Sabha MP, contested the Dispur Assembly seat on a BJP ticket and won.
With the latest announcement, Nagaon is the only Lok Sabha constituency to have a bypoll scheduled in the current round, while the timelines for Basirhat and Shillong remain uncertain.