Counting of votes for bypoll to Vav assembly seat in Gujarat on Saturday

Ahmedabad, Nov 22 (PTI) Counting of votes for last week's bypoll to the Vav assembly seat in Gujarat's Banaskantha district, where ruling BJP and opposition Congress were the main contenders, will be held on Saturday, officials said.
The counting of votes for the bypoll held on November 13 will take place at an engineering college in Jagana village, they said.
Nearly 160 election officials and 400 personnel of the Gujarat police and Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) have been deployed at the counting centre, where the votes will be counted from 8 am, a release issued by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) for Gujarat said on Friday.
The results will be declared after the counting process concludes, it said.
A voter turnout of 70.55 per cent was recorded in the by-election. Out of the 3.10 lakh registered voters, nearly 2.19 lakh exercised their franchise at 321 polling booths using EVMs and VVPAT machines, the release said.
The Vav seat fell vacant following the resignation of Congress MLA Geniben Thakor, who was elected to the Lok Sabha from Banaskantha in June.
Congress candidate and former MLA Gulabsinh Rajput and BJP's Swaroopji Thakor are the main contestants, but the presence of BJP rebel Mavji Patel has made the bypoll a three-way fight.
Patel (73), who comes from the dominant Chaudhary community, was suspended as BJP's primary member on Sunday for his decision to contest as an independent candidate.
Seven other candidates - six independents and one from the Bharatiya Jan Parishad party - were also in the fray for the bypoll.
BJP's Thakor had lost from the seat, a Congress bastion, to opposition party candidate Geniben Thakor in the 2022 assembly polls.
The constituency has been a Congress stronghold, with Geniben winning the seat in 2017 and again in 2022.
Patel had won the Vav seat in 1990 as a Janata Dal candidate. He then joined the opposition Congress, but switched to the ruling BJP in 2019 after being denied a ticket from Tharad seat in the 2017 assembly polls.
In the 2012 assembly elections, Mavji Patel was the Congress candidate from Tharad seat, but lost to the BJP. After being denied a ticket in 2017 from the seat, he fought as an independent but lost to BJP candidate Parbatbhai Patel.
In the 2019 Tharad bypoll, Congress' Gulabsinh Rajput defeated BJP nominee Jivraj Patel. He, however, lost to BJP candidate Shankar Chaudhary in 2022.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)