The Election Commission announced byelections in only three Assembly seats — one each in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat — on Thursday, though there are currently at least 14 vacant seats in State legislatures across the country, apart from six vacant Parliamentary seats, three each in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.
The Representation of People Act mandates bypolls within six months of a seat falling vacant, but experts said the ECI has the discretionary power to choose at which point during these six months to conduct the polls. The courts have generally shown deference to the ECI’s decisions in electoral matters, they said.
The RPA Act also carves out two exceptions to this six-month rule: where the remainder of the term is less than one year, or where the Election Commission, in consultation with the Union government, certifies that it is difficult to hold the byelection within the prescribed period. However, through judicial interpretation, a third exception has been recognised — when there is a pending election petition concerning that vacant seat.
Too fast, too slow
Opposition parties have repeatedly questioned the “hurry” and “delay” in announcing bypolls.
For instance, the ECI’s announcement of a bypoll in Madhya Pradesh’s Datia Assembly seat on Thursday led to protests from the Congress, which questioned the “hurry” of the poll body. The seat had fallen vacant after the disqualification of the Congress’s Rajendra Bharti in April, following his conviction in a fraud case. He has challenged the verdict in the Delhi High Court and sought a stay. His plea is scheduled to be heard on July 8 and bypolls are scheduled for July 30.
According to legal experts, the ECI can go ahead with its schedule for bypolls until and unless the court grants a stay.
“Till the court gives a stay on holding a byelection, the ECI can announce bypolls anytime within a six-month time frame, even if a case is pending,” senior Supreme Court lawyer Sanjay Hegde told The Hindu.
‘Stalling to benefit the BJP’
The Congress, while protesting the hurried announcement of the Datia bypoll, is also pointing to the delay in holding a byelection for Uttar Pradesh’s Milkipur Assembly seat which was vacated following the election of the Samajwadi Party’s Awadesh Prasad to the Lok Sabha in the 2024 general election. The Opposition SP had accused the ECI of stalling the bypoll to give the BJP time to strategise and redeem its reputation after suffering significant setbacks in the Lok Sabha polls.
In this case, however, an election petition by the BJP candidate was pending in the Allahabad High Court and the bypoll was scheduled only in February 2025, after the petition in the High Court was eventually withdrawn.
The Supreme Court, in the Election Commission of India v. Telangana Rashtra Samithi (2010) case, had held that a seat cannot be treated as available for a bypoll while the validity of its previous election itself is under challenge. The Commission must therefore await the outcome of the election petition before proceeding with the byelection, it had said.
Pending poll petition in Datia
“This interpretation is sound because an election petition may ultimately result in the court declaring another candidate to have been duly elected. If a byelection has already been held by then, that declaration would become largely otiose,” said Swapnil Tripathi, Lead at Charkha, the Constitutional Law Centre at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.
Of the three vacant Lok Sabha seats, for instance, the Bashirhat seat in West Bengal has had an election petition pending since the 2024 election. Thus, despite the fact that sitting Trinamool Congress MP S.K. Nurul Islam passed away in September 2024, no byelection has been announced till date.
No pending petitions elsewhere
However, there are two other vacant LS seats where bypolls are yet to be announced despite no pending petitions — Shillong in Meghalaya, which fell vacant following the death of MP Ricky Andrew J. Syngkon in February this year; and Nagaon in Assam, which has not had an MP since former representative Pradyut Bordoloi resigned in March.
There are vacancies in the Rajya Sabha as well, which arose due to the resignations of three Trinamool Congress MPs last month.
Apart from this, the Tamil Nadu Assembly has seven vacant seats. Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay resigned from one of the two seats he won in the 2026 election, creating one vacancy, while the other six arose when AIADMK legislators resigned to join the ruling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK). On May 10, Karnataka Minister D. Sudhakar passed away, as a result of which the Hiriyur Assembly seat is vacant. Three Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh (Ghosi, Faridpur, and Duddhi) are also vacant due to the deaths of incumbent legislators.
The ECI has not yet announced byelection dates for any of these constituencies.
Published – July 03, 2026 11:07 pm IST
