The Election Commission (EC) on Thursday announced bypolls’ dates to seven Rajya Sabha seats including one from Assam that have fallen vacant due to various reasons.
According to EC’s notification, there are two such seats in Tamil Nadu and one each in West Bengal, Assam, Maharashtra, Puducherry and Madhya Pradesh.
The polls to all these seven seats will take place on October 4, the EC said.
In Assam, the Rajya Sabha seat held by assembly speaker Biswajit Daimary fell vacant after he resigned from the membership of the upper house of Parliament and his earlier party, the Bodoland People’s Front, and joined the BJP before the recent polls in the state.
The BJP likely to field Union minister and former CM Sarbananda Sonowal from the Assam seat as he is yet to become a member of either house of Parliament.
The EC said in its order that all “broad guidelines of COVID-19” have to be followed during the election process, that is from the time of issue of notification to the counting of votes.
“The chief secretaries of states concerned are being directed to depute a senior officer from the state to ensure that the extant instructions regarding COVID-19 containment measures are complied with while making arrangements for conducting the election,” the poll panel said.