Kolkata, 24 May

The BJP on Sunday swept the repoll to Bengal's Falta Assembly seat with a victory margin of more than one lakh votes in the constituency long seen as a citadel of the TMC, whose nominee slipped to fourth place and forfeited his deposit.

Polling 1,49,666 votes, the BJP's Debangshu Panda defeated his nearest rival, the CPI(M)'s Sambhu Nath Kurmi, by a margin of 1,09,021 votes. Kurmi secured 40,645 votes while the Congress' Abdur Razzak Molla finished third with 10,084 votes.

TMC's Jahangir Khan, once among the most talked-about faces of the Falta campaign, slipped to fourth place with just 7,783 votes and forfeited his deposit.

Two days before polling, Khan had announced that he was stepping aside "for Falta's interest", a move the BJP mocked as an attempt to "run away" from the battle. However, since withdrawal of nomination was not possible at that time, his name remained on the EVMs.

The Falta Assembly seat had been held by the TMC since 2011. The party retained the constituency in 2021 with around 57 per cent of the votes polled. Sunday's verdict, however, marked a dramatic collapse in the party's support base.

The BJP secured 71.2 per cent vote share in the repoll, a sharp jump from 36.75 per cent in 2021, while the TMC's vote share crashed to just 3.7 per cent.

The result came days after the BJP ended the TMC's 15-year rule and scripted a regime change in West Bengal earlier this month, lending the Falta contest significance far beyond the boundaries of South 24 Parganas and turning it into an early test of the state's altered political landscape.

With the Falta victory, the BJP's tally in Election Commission records for the 2026 Assembly polls rose to 208 from 207, though its effective Assembly strength remained 207 after Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari vacated Nandigram upon retaining Bhabanipur.

Adhikari described the verdict as proof that "reality had come to light" when people were allowed to vote freely.

In a post on X, Adhikari said he bowed "in salutation to the people of Falta" for giving a "resounding mandate" to BJP candidate Debangshu Panda and noted that he had appealed for a victory margin of one lakh votes, a target that had been crossed.

Promising to repay the "debt through development" and build a "golden Falta", he launched a sharp attack on the TMC, alleging that the party, while in power, had transformed itself into a "mafia company" that abused state machinery, looted public funds and fostered a culture of syndicates and intimidation.

Without naming anyone directly, Adhikari referred to a "fraudster who parachuted in and claimed the title of commander", alleging that democracy had been throttled and asserting that the previous election had been reduced to a "farce". He was apparently referring to TMC general secretary and Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Banerjee.

Claiming that Falta voters had regained the freedom to vote independently after 15 years, Adhikari said the "reality has come to light", and asserted that "this was just the beginning" of what he called a wider political rejection of the TMC. He further claimed that in future elections, the TMC leadership could face a battle even against "NOTA", arguing that the people of West Bengal were waiting to witness such a contest unfold.

After the result, Panda said, "People have been able to cast their vote freely and fairly. I want to thank the people of Falta for the victory."

The result also cast a shadow over what the TMC had long projected as the politically impregnable "Diamond Harbour model", as the BJP sought to convert a local repoll into a larger political message.

The scale of the BJP's victory transformed what was expected to be a straightforward electoral exercise into a politically loaded outcome carrying significance far beyond the constituency.

Until a few weeks ago, Falta had been described by TMC leaders as one of the symbols of the party's organisational dominance in the Diamond Harbour belt. The constituency witnessed aggressive political mobilisation and became central to a bitter face-off between the BJP and TMC.

Khan, who cultivated a larger-than-life "Pushpa"-style persona during the campaign and emerged as one of the most recognisable faces of the contest, dramatically announced two days before polling that he was stepping aside "for Falta's interest". The constituency saw little sign of an active TMC campaign during the repoll. Party offices largely remained inactive, and Khan himself stayed away from public view.

Residents said that on polling day, his residence remained locked and local party workers were conspicuous by their absence. The BJP sharpened its attack and repeatedly claimed that the repoll would reveal what a "free election" in Falta looked like.

A close confidant of Abhishek Banerjee, Khan had delivered a lead of over one lakh votes from the Falta assembly segment to the TMC general secretary during the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

The Assembly constituency had become the centre of controversy after the 29 April polling when complaints surfaced over alleged use of perfume-like substances, ink marks and adhesive tapes on EVMs at multiple booths.

The Election Commission ordered a repoll in all 285 booths on 21 May, held under an unprecedented security blanket.