Gujarat bypoll results: Counting of votes begins for Vav assembly seat

Counting of votes in the bypoll to the Vav assembly seat in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district, where ruling BJP and opposition Congress were the main contenders, began on Saturday morning.

The vote count for the bypoll held on November 13 commenced at 8 am at an engineering college in Jagana village, officials said.

Nearly 160 election officials and 400 personnel of the Gujarat police and Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) have been deployed at the counting centre, the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) for Gujarat has said.

A voter turnout of 70.55 per cent was recorded in the by-election. Out of the 3.10 lakh registered voters, nearly 2.19 lakh exercised their franchise at 321 polling booths using EVMs and VVPAT machines.

The Vav seat fell vacant following the resignation of Congress MLA Geniben Thakor, who was elected to the Lok Sabha from Banaskantha in June.

Congress candidate and former MLA Gulabsinh Rajput and BJP’s Swaroopji Thakor are the main contestants, but the presence of BJP rebel Mavji Patel has made the bypoll a three-way fight.

Patel (73), who comes from the dominant Chaudhary community, was suspended as BJP’s primary member on Sunday for his decision to contest as an independent candidate.

Seven other candidates - six independents and one from the Bharatiya Jan Parishad party - were also in the fray for the bypoll.

BJP’s Thakor had lost from the seat, a Congress bastion, to opposition party candidate Geniben Thakor in the 2022 assembly polls.

The constituency has been a Congress stronghold, with Geniben winning the seat in 2017 and again in 2022.

Patel had won the Vav seat in 1990 as a Janata Dal candidate. He then joined the opposition Congress, but switched to the ruling BJP in 2019 after being denied a ticket from Tharad seat in the 2017 assembly polls.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Firstpost staff.)