Chandigarh, Nov 2 (PTI) Counting of votes for the October 30 bypoll to the Ellenabad assembly constituency in Haryana's Sirsa district started at 8 am on Tuesday amid tight security arrangements.

The bypoll was necessitated after Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) leader Abhay Singh Chautala's resignation as the MLA from the seat in January in protest against three central farm laws.

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There are 19 candidates in the fray, including Chautala, Congress nominee Pawan Beniwal and BJP-JJP candidate Gobind Kanda. Gobind Kanda, the brother of Haryana Lokhit Party chief and legislator Gopal Kanda, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) recently.

Beniwal, who had unsuccessfully contested the previous assembly polls against Chautala, recently switched over from the BJP to the Congress.

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Chautala had won the Rori assembly bypoll in Sirsa district in 2000 and the 2010 bypoll from Ellenabad, when INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala vacated the seat to retain the Uchana seat in Jind district -- the other constituency from which he had contested the election in 2009 and won.

In the 2010 bypoll in Ellenabad, Chautala won the seat and retained it in 2014 too. He again won from Ellenabad in the 2019 assembly polls, when he was the lone INLD MLA to enter the House.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)