The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept the re-poll for the Valta assembly seat in Bengal on Sunday, with its candidate Dibangshu Panda winning by a margin of over a thousand votes.
Panda won by a record margin of 109,021 votes – the highest among all 294 seats polled in April – while the Trinamool Congress (TMC) came in fourth place with 7,783 votes, losing its electoral deposit for the first time since 2011, when it ousted the Left Front government and ruled for three terms.
Banda received 149,666 votes. CPI’s Sambo Nath Karmi and Congress candidate Abdul Razzaq Molla came second and third in the race with 40,645 and 10,084 votes respectively.
The assembly seat includes about 225,000 voters, including about 165,000 Hindus. The re-poll of Falta 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 elections since 2011.
Read also:Valta 2026 election results live: BJP’s Dibangshu Panda sweeps Valta by over 1 lakh votes
Khan sparked a dispute within his party by announcing his withdrawal from the elections 48 hours before the May 21 elections. But his name remained on the list of candidates on electronic voting machines.
In the two-phase elections held in April, the BJP won 207 seats against the TMC’s 80 seats. On Sunday, the BJP tally rose to 208 seats.
Amid celebrations by BJP supporters, Prime Minister Suvendu Adhikari, who urged Valta voters to ensure Banda’s victory by more than 100,000 votes, thanked them and criticized the TMC without naming him.
“A party without principle or policy has turned into a mafia corporation. The defeat has exposed its skeleton. This is just the beginning. In the coming days, the TMC leadership will have a tough time competing against NOTA (none of the above options in EVM).” Adhuikari wrote on X.
Promising to repay “debts 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 corporation” that abused state machinery, plundered public funds and fostered a culture of unionism and intimidation.
Former CM and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee appeared live on Facebook and questioned the entire governance of the Bengal elections.
“Was this an election or a facade? 10 million voters were delisted in the name of logical inconsistency (during a special intensive review of the electoral roll). There was rampant fraud at counting centres,” Banerjee said. BJP personnel entered the counting stations wearing the uniform of the Central Armed Paramilitary Forces.”
