Bypolls in Satara LS constituency on Oct 21: EC

New Delhi, Sep 24 (IANS) The Election Commission (EC) on Tuesday announced that the bypolls for Maharashtra's Satara parliamentary constituency will be held on October 21 along with all the other 288 Assembly seats in the state.

The poll panel said that the results of the bypolls will be announced on October 24.

The Commission said that the notification for the Satara bypolls will be issued on Friday, while the last date for filing nomination will be October 4.

The scrutiny of the nomination papers will take place on October 5 and the last date for withdrawing candidature is October 7.

The bypolls for the Satara seat was necessitated after Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and sitting MP Udayanraje Bhoslae, a descendant of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, resigned as Lok Sabha MP within on September 14 and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Bhosale, 53, was elected as an MP from Satara thrice - in 2009, and also during 2014 and 2019.

In this year's Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 23 out of 48 seats in Maharashtra while its alliance partner Shiv Sena managed to win 18 seats. The NCP won four seats while the Congress managed to win only one seat in the state.

On September 21, the poll panel had announced the schedule for the Assembly polls in the state.

The term of the Maharashtra Assembly will end on November 9.

In the 2014 Assembly polls in Maharashtra, the BJP had won 122 seats, its ally Shiv Sena 63 seats, the Congress 42 seats, the NCP 41 seats while others managed 20.

The Congress and the NCP had contested the 2014 polls separately after sharing power for 15 years in the state.