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Uttarakhand: AAP’s 2022 candidate joins Congress ahead of Bageshwar bypoll
The development came a day after the Congress candidate in the 2022 assembly election joined the Bharatiya Janata Party
Basant Kumar, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate who unsuccessfully contested the 2022 Uttarakhand assembly election from Bageshwar seat, on Sunday joined the Congress ahead of the September 5 bypoll in the same constituency.
It came a day after Ranjeet Das, the Congress candidate in the 2022 assembly election, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the presence of chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and state party chief Mahendra Bhatt.
The Bageshwar assembly seat had been left vacant due to the death of its MLA and Cabinet minister Chandan Ram Dass on April 26.
In the 2022 Assembly election, the BJP’s Chandan Ram Dass won the seat with 32,211 votes, while Ranjeet Das obtained 20,070 votes, and Basant Kumar got 16,109.
Both the BJP and Congress have sent names to their high command for the selection of their respective candidates for the Bageshwar by-poll.
The state BJP parliamentary board, including the chief minister and the BJP state chief, on Thursday discussed seven names and subsequently finalised three, including late minister Chandan Ram Dass’s son Gaurav Dass. People in political circles speculate that Gaurav Dass would be a favourable candidate for the party’s central leadership as his late father was a four-time MLA from the Bageshwar seat. The BJP on Friday announced that the party’s candidate will file nomination on August 16.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Tuesday announced that voting for Bageshwar by-election will be held on September 5 and counting on September 8.
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