Assembly bypolls 2024: Congress fields CM Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife from Dehra

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur will contest from the Dehra assembly seat in the by-elections, slated to be held on July 10. The Congress has also named candidates for two seats in West Bengal. Mohit Sengupta has been fielded from Raiganj and Ashok Halder from Bagda (SC). 

Byelections will be held for 3 seats - Hamirpur, Nalagarh, and Dehra - in Himachal, and 4 seats in West Bengal. 

The Congress has fielded Pushpendra Verma from the Hamirpur seat. Pushpendra Verma will take on BJP's Ashish Sharma. Ashish Sharma is one of the three independent legislatures who had voted in favour of BJP nominee Harsh Mahajan in Rajya Sabha polls held on February 27. Later, he resigned as MLA and joined the BJP. 

In the 2022 assembly elections, Ashish Sharma, who was then contesting as an Independent, defeated Pushpendra Verma by a margin of 12,899 votes.

On Monday, the BJP announced the names of its candidates for all four seats in West Bengal. The party fielded Kalyan Chaubey from the Maniktala constituency in Kolkata, Manas Kumar Ghosh from Raiganj in Uttar Dinajpur district, Manoj Kumar Biswas from Ranaghat Dakshin (SC) in Nadia district, and Binay Kumar Biswas from the Bagda seat. 

Manoj and Binay belong to the Matua community, which has a significant chunk of voters in Ranaghat Dakshin and Bagda. Chaubey had been defeated by TMC leader Sadhan Pandey in the 2021 assembly polls but the seat fell vacant after Pandey's death. 

The TMC has fielded Krishna Kalyani from Raiganj, Mukut Mani Adhikari from Ranaghat-Dakshin, Supti Pandey from Maniktala, and Madhuparna Thakur from Bagdah. Kalyani had won on a BJP ticket from Raiganj in the 2021 assembly polls and later switched to the TMC as the party's candidate for Lok Sabha polls but lost in the election.