National: Congress on Sunday (October 20) announced candidates for the November 13 by-elections to assembly constituencies in Assam and Madhya Pradesh. The party declared candidates for four out of five seats in Assam and two seats in Madhya Pradesh.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has approved the proposals to nominate the candidates for the bye-elections to the Legislative Assemblies of Assam and Madhya Pradesh.

Check full list of candidates 

For Assam bypolls, Congress has announced Dhrubajyoti Purakayastha (Dholai-SC) constituency, Sanjib Warle for Sidi (ST), Brajenjit Sinha for Bongaigaon and Tanzil Hussain for Samaguri. For Madhya Pradesh bypolls, Mukesh Malhotra and Rajkumar Patel will be contesting from Vijaypur and Budhni constituencies respectively.

Assembly by-polls

The bypolls in Budhni and Vijaypur assembly constituencies in Sehore and Sheopur districts, respectively, in Madhya Pradesh will be held on November 13 and votes will be counted on November 23.

The bye-election to the Budhni assembly seat was necessitated following the resignation of Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who won from the Vidisha Lok Sabha seat earlier this year and became a Union minister. The Vijaypur seat fell vacant after Rawat resigned as a Congress MLA and joined the ruling BJP before this year’s Lok Sabha elections, which was swept by the saffron party in the state. Rawat is now the state’s forest minister.

The by-elections for five Assembly seats in Assam will be conducted on November 13, with the results slated for November 23. The constituencies involved in this electoral process are Dholai, Sidli, Bongaigaon, Behali, and Samuguri.

These five Assembly seats became vacant earlier this year following the Lok Sabha elections, where several MLAs shifted their focus to parliamentary positions. Two MLAs from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including a cabinet minister, and one each from the alliance partners Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and United Peoples Party Liberal (UPPL), as well as one from the opposition Congress, secured wins in the Lok Sabha polls.

In the recent elections, BJP's Parimal Suklabaidya, who represented the Dholai Assembly segment, and Ranjit Dutta from Behali, successfully contested for the Cachar and Tezpur Lok Sabha seats, respectively. Additionally, veteran AGP leader Phani Bhushan Choudhury, who has been a continuous presence in the Bongaigaon constituency since 1985, won the Barpeta Lok Sabha seat. Meanwhile, UPPL’s Joyanta Basumatary, the former MLA from Sidli, also made a mark by winning the Kokrajhar seat.

The Dhubri Lok Sabha seat was clinched by Congress’s Rakibul Hussain, marking a significant achievement as he won by a considerable margin, reinforcing his status as a five-time legislator from Samuguri.