By-elections to 11 Assembly seats will be held in Uttar Pradesh on October 21.
These seats fell vacant due to the resignation of sitting members after they were elected to the Lok Sabha, while one MLA was appointed Governor of Bihar.
The Election Commission on Saturday announced the date of bypolls to be held along with Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana.
Model code of conduct has come into force in these 11 poll-bound constituencies with the announcement of the date of polls.
The notification for the bypolls would be issued on September 27. The last date for filing nominations will be October 4. Scrutiny of papers will be held the next day, while the last date for withdrawal of papers will be October 7. Polling will be held through electronic voting machines (EVMs) having voter-verified paper audit trail VVPAT) system on October 21. The results will be declared on October 24.
The Assembly constituencies going to bypolls are Jalalpur (Ambedkarnagar), Tundla (Ferozabad), Pratapgarh, Rampur, Lucknow Cantonment, Gangoh (Saharanpur), Manikpur (Chitrakoot), Govindnagar (Kanpur) and Ghosi (Mau) and the reserved seats of Balha (Bahraich), Iglas (Aligarh) and Zaidpur (Barabanki).
The Ghosi seat was vacated by Bharatiya Janata Party member Phagu Chauhan after he was appointed Governor of Bihar.
Except for Rampur and Jalalpur, all seats were held by the BJP.
In Rampur, Samajwadi Party member Mohammad Azam Khan resigned after being elected to Lok Sabha while Bahujan Samaj Party member Ritesh Pandey who represented Jalalpur seat resigned from Assembly after winning the Ambedkarnagar Lok Sabha seat.
In Pratapgarh, Sangam Lal Gupta, MLA of Apna Dal (Sonelal), an ally of the BJP, had contested the election on BJP symbol.
The BJP members who resigned after being elected to Lok Sabha are Akshywar Lal Gond (Balha), RK Singh Patel (Manikpur), Upendra Singh (Zaidpur), Pradeep Kumar (Gangoh), Rajveer Diler (Iglas), Rita Bahuguna Joshi (Lucknow Cantonment), Satyadeo Pachauri (Govindnagar) and Satya Pal Singh Baghel (Tundla).
Meanwhile, bypoll to Hamirpur Assembly seat will be held on September 23. This seat was also held by the BJP. There is a four-cornered contest in Hamirpur where campaigning ended on Saturday evening.