Polling began on Tuesday for the Asansol Lok Sabha seat and Ballygunge Assembly byelections in West Bengal.

Polling began at 7 am today and will continue till 6.30 pm, reported ANI.

Following the resignation of Union minister Babul Supriyo as the Lok Sabha MP of Asansol after he resigned from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), necessitating the bypolls. Meanwhile, the Ballygunge assembly seat bypoll was necessitated after the death of state minister Subrata Mukherjee.

Supriyo, who was a twi-term BJP MP, resigned from the party and later joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC).

The BJP has fielded Keya Ghosh while the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has fielded Saira Shah Halim for the Ballygunge Assembly bypoll.

Veteran actor Shatrughan Sinha, who had also jumped ship to join TMC, was fielded by the party in Asansol, which has a significant Hindi-speaking population. The BJP nominated Agnimitra Paul, the Asansol Dakhsin MLA from the constituency.

Notably, TMC had secured 213 seats in the state assembly elections held last year, comprehensively defeating BJP, which managed to garner 77 seats in comparison.

Supriyo had defeated TMC candidate Moon Moon Sen by a massive margin, securing 51.56 per cent of the total votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

On the other hand, Shatrughan Sinha was defeated by former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. Sinha was in Congress then and was their nominee from the Patna Sahib seat.

The counting of votes will take place on April 16.