Falta Repoll: BJP Leads With More Than 85,000 Votes, TMC Candidate Jahangir Khan Continues To Get Votes Despite Backing Out

FALTA REPOLL: BJP’s Debangshu Panda pulled ahead in the repoll for West Bengal’s Falta Assembly constituency on Sunday. Election Commission numbers showed Panda had a lead of over 85,000 votes. With 15 out of 21 rounds counted, Panda grabbed 1,03,089 votes. Sambhu Nath Kurmi from CPI(M) trailed far behind with 33,416 votes. Congress’s Abdur Razzak Molla was way back in third, notching up 9,089 votes. As for the TMC, their candidate Jahangir Khan landed in fourth with 5,134 votes. Khan had already bowed out two days before voting, saying he was putting Falta first and mentioning Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari’s promise of a special development package. But the TMC leadership quickly distanced itself from Khan’s decision, chalking it up as his own call.

Falta vote counting kicked off at 8 am under heavy security, according to an EC official. The repoll spanned all 285 booths in South 24 Parganas after the April 29 vote was scrapped over claims of EVM tampering and other irregularities. The new polling day was May 21.

Why is Jahangir Khan still getting votes despite backing out?

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) candidate Jahangir Khan was still collecting votes on the result portal. This comes after Jahangir Khan, TMC candidate, withdrew from the election race earlier in the week. Despite being absent from the voting process of May 21, Jahangir Khan had scored around 3%, although he was no longer in politics.

Jahangir Khan announced his withdrawal from the race on May 19, just two days before the revote. Some of his reasons included developmental proposals offered to him by the chief minister Suvendu Adhikari, who is the first one from the BJP of the state.

Falta Repoll Turnout Numbers

More than 87% of the 2.36 lakh voters showed up for the repoll. Security was tight this time, with the Commission bringing in about 35 companies of central forces to keep things running smoothly. Out of all the voters here, there are 1,21,300 men, 1,15,135 women, and nine people identifying as third gender.

Things felt pretty tense around the constituency after people complained during the April 29 polling. Apparently, there were concerns about perfume-like substances and adhesive tapes being used on EVMs at several booths. Afterwards, officials found more issues. Some people seemed to have tried messing with the web camera footage from various polling stations. That raised doubts about how the booth-level officers, presiding officers, polling staff, and election observers were handling things.

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