Falta Repoll: BJP Wins by 1 Lakh Votes; TMC Finishes Fourth

Kolkata (IANS): Election officials declared the final results for the Falta Assembly repoll in West Bengal on Sunday after completing all rounds of counting, confirming a landslide victory for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Debangshu Panda by a margin of 1,09,021 votes.

Panda secured a dominant 1,49,666 votes, while CPI(M) candidate Sambhunath Kurmi finished a distant second with 40,645 votes. Congress candidate Abdur Razzak claimed third place with 10,084 votes, leaving Trinamool Congress (TMC) candidate Jahangir Khan in fourth place with just 7,783 votes. Both the Congress and TMC candidates forfeited their electoral deposits.

Breaking Historical Records

The Falta repoll outcome created history in West Bengal politics through two unique milestones:

• A Historic Low for TMC: For the first time since the foundation of the Trinamool Congress in January 1998, a TMC candidate finished an election in fourth position.
• Forfeited Deposit: This marks the first time since 2011—the year that ended the 34-year Left Front regime and launched the TMC’s 15-year rule—that a TMC candidate has forfeited their deposit.

Following Panda’s victory, the BJP has expanded its majority in the 294-seat West Bengal Assembly to 208 seats. The Trinamool Congress follows with 80 seats, the Congress and the Aam Janata Unnayan Party (AJUP) hold two seats each, while the CPI(M) and the All India Secular Front (AISF) retain one seat each.

A Stark Reversal of Political Fortunes

Sunday’s results completely upended the historical voting trends in Falta seen during both the 2021 Assembly elections and the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

In 2021, TMC’s Shankar Kumar Nashkar won the Falta seat—one of the seven Assembly segments under the Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha constituency—by a margin of 41,000 votes. Furthermore, during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, this same segment handed TMC General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee a massive lead of roughly 1,20,000 votes, an outcome that opposition parties heavily criticized as a farce.

Why the Election Commission Ordered a Repoll

Voters originally headed to the polls for the Falta constituency on April 29 during the second phase of the state’s assembly elections. However, that day brought a wave of complaints regarding electoral malpractices. At multiple polling stations, miscreants had covered the EVM buttons for the BJP candidates with white tape. Additionally, hundreds of residents protested on the streets, alleging that Jahangir Khan’s supporters blocked them from casting their ballots.

Following these disruptions, special poll observer Subrata Gupta investigated the area personally. Based on his findings, the Election Commission of India (ECI) countermanded the original vote and ordered a fresh repoll across all 285 booths, which took place under heavy security on May 21.