Nalagarh Assembly constituency witnessed the highest 78 percent voter turnout in the by-polls held in three Assembly constituencies in Himachal Pradesh.

It was followed by 67.7 percent in Hamirpur and 65.42 percent in Dehra Assembly constituency.

Voting was held for the by-elections in these three seats of Himachal Pradesh on Wednesday.

The elections in Dehra, Nalagarh and Hamirpur Assembly constituency will decide the fate of 13 candidates in the fray including Kamlesh Thakur wife of Chief Minister Thakur Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu.

The results will be announced on July 13.

The by-polls were necessitated as the seats fell vacant after three independent MLAs Hoshyar Singh (Dehra), K L Thakur (Nalagarh) and Ashish Sharma resigned from the State legislative Assembly on March 22.

The State Assembly speaker accepted their resignation on June 4.

They had earlier on February 27 voted in favour of BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan in the Rajya Sabha elections along with six Congress rebels.

The three independent MLAs along with the rebels later joined BJP. They are contesting the by-polls on the BJP ticket.

Stakes are high for the Chief Minister as his wife Kamlesh Thakur is contesting from Dehra that Congress has never won since the constituency was carved out after delimitation in 2010.

Her opponent Hoshyar Singh in the fray has won the seat twice in 2017 and 2022 consecutively.

Congress lost all the four Lok Sabha seats for a third time consecutively, however they managed to clinch four out of six by-polls that were held simultaneously along with the parliamentary elections on June 3.

Presently the strength of the Congress MLAs in the State Legislative Assembly of 68 is 38.

Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Maneesh Garg said, “According to the information received for 6 PM, the highest nearly 78 percent voting was recorded in Nalagarh AC followed by 67.7 percent in Hamirpur while approximately 65.42 percent voting was recorded in Dehra AC.”

The final figures of voting percentage will be released only after the return of all the polling parties and scrutiny of documents, he added.

CEO said that apart from the voting at polling stations in concerned ACs, about 1523 voters above 85 years of age and 348 PwD voters availed home voting facility.

He said that a total of 13 candidates were in the fray for three ACs including two women candidates. There are five candidates each in Dehra and Nalagarh while in Hamirpur AC there are only three candidates in the election fray.

“After the announcement of polling on June 10 and the implementation of the model code of conduct (MCC) in Dehra, Nalagarh AC and Hamirpur district, till the day of polling, in the joint action taken by the enforcement agencies of the Police, Income Tax, State Tax and Excise and Industry departments, seizures worth about 3.4 crore were made,” said Garg.