Shimla, Jul 13 (PTI) Counting of votes for the bypolls to three assembly seats in Himachal Pradesh was underway on Saturday.

Polling was held for the Dehra, Hamirpur and the Nalagarh assembly constituencies on Wednesday.

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Thirteen candidates, including of the BJP and the Congress, were in the fray.

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The Nalagarh assembly constituency had recorded the highest polling at 79.04 per cent, followed by Hamirpur (67.72 per cent) and Dehra (65.42 per cent).

The overall voting percentage of the three bypolls was 71 per cent, according to the data of the state election department

The seats fell vacant after the three Independent legislators Hoshiyar Singh (Dehra), Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur) and K L Thakur (Nalagarh), who had voted in favour of the BJP in the Rajya Sabha polls held on February 27, resigned from the state assembly on March 22 and joined the party the next day.

Their resignations, however, were accepted by the assembly speaker on June 3, and the seats were declared vacant, necessitating the by-elections.

The BJP fielded all the three former MLAs from their respective seats.

The Congress fielded Kamlesh Thakur, wife of Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, from Dehra, repeated its candidate Pushpinder Verma from Hamirpur and gave ticket to five-time Indian National Trade Union Congress president, Himachal Pradesh unit, Hardeep Singh Baba, from Nalagarh.

Though the bypolls will not make much difference in the 68-member House as the Congress has a majority with 38 MLAs. The BJP has 27 members.

The entry of Kamlesh Thakur has made the elections interesting as the prestige of the chief minister is at stake in Dehra.

(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)