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BJP sweeps Bengal’s Falta repoll as Debangshu Panda wins by over 1 lakh votes
Debangshu Panda received 1,49,666 votes, defeating his nearest rival by a margin of 1,09,021 votes.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept the repoll for Bengal's Falta assembly seat on Sunday with its candidate Debangshu Panda winning by a margin of over one lakh votes.
Panda won by a record margin of 1,09,021 votes - the highest among all 294 seats polled in April - while Trinamool Congress (TMC) came in fourth with 7783 votes, losing its electoral deposit for the first time since 2011, when it unseated the Left Front government and ruled for three terms.
Panda secured 149666 votes. CPI(M)'s Sambhu Nath Kurmi and Congress candidate Abdur Razzak Molla came second and third in the race with 40645 and 10084 votes respectively.
Falta election results 2026 LIVE: BJP’s Debangshu Panda sweeps Falta by margin of over 1 lakh votes
The assembly seat has around 225000 voters of whom about 165,000 are Hindus. The Falta repoll was ordered because a section of Hindu voters alleged that Jahangir Khan, the TMC candidate, and his men had prevented them from voting in any election since 2011.
Khan triggered a row in his party by announcing 48 hours before the May 21 bypoll that he was withdrawing from the election. His name, however, remained on the candidates' list in the EVMs.
In the two-phase polls in April, BJP won 207 seats against the TMC's 80. On Sunday, the BJP's tally rose to 208.
Also Read | Bengal's Falta election: How Jahangir Khan of Trinamool, who backed out before repoll, got 3.7% of the votes
Amid celebrations by BJP supporters, chief minister Suvendu Adhikari, who had urged Falta voters to ensure Panda's victory by more than 100,000 votes, thanked them and criticised the TMC without naming it.
"A party without a principal or policy turned into a mafia company. The defeat has exposed its skeleton. This is just the beginning. In the coming days, the TMC leadership will face a tough time contesting against the NOTA (none of the above option in EVM)." Adhuikari wrote on X.
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.
Former CM and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee went live on Facebook and questioned the entire verdict of the Bengal polls.
"Was this an election or a face? 10 million voters were delisted in the name of logical discrepancy (during the special intensive revision of electoral roll). There was rampant rigging at the counting centres. BJP people entered the counting centres wearing Central armed paramilitary force uniforms," Banerjee said.
