Voting for the bypoll to the Bageshwar assembly seat in Uttarakhand began at 7 am on Tuesday.

The bypoll was necessitated by the death of sitting BJP MLA and cabinet minister Chandan Ram Das in April. He had won the seat in four consecutive polls since 2007.

The bypoll is important as its verdict will reflect the mood of voters in Uttarakhand ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The BJP won all the five Lok Sabha seats in the state in the 2014 and 2019 general elections.

The bypoll result is also being touted as a progress report of the Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami-led BJP government, which has completed over a year of its second term after registering a massive win in the 2022 Uttarakhand assembly elections.

The BJP has fielded Das' widow Parvati in the bypoll and is hoping to capitalise on sympathy votes to retain the seat.

There are four other candidates in the fray -- Congress' Basant Kumar, Samajwadi Party's Bhagvati Prasad, Uttarakhand Kranti Dal's Arjun Dev and Uttarakhand Parivartan Party's Bhagwat Kohli.

However, the direct contest is likely to be between the BJP and the Congress.

The seat has seen straight contests between the two parties in successive polls since 2000, when Uttarakhand was carved out of Uttar Pradesh.

Congress' Kumar had contested from Bageshwar on an AAP ticket in the 2022 assembly polls. He quit the AAP to join the Congress days before he was fielded by the party.

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