Diamond Harbour: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), on anticipated lines, has taken a massive lead in the Falta Assembly constituency in West Bengal where re-polling took place on May 21.
While counting of votes are still underway, Debangshu Panda of the BJP was leading by over 69,000 votes against his nearest rival, Sambhu Nath Kurmi of the CPI(M), after 15 rounds of counting.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) is in fourth place with 5,134 votes, trailing Abdur Razzak Mollah of the Congress, who has a tally of 9,089.
This was expected as Jahangir Khan, the TMC candidate, withdrew from the race barely two days ahead of polling. The party called it his personal decision.
Counting of votes is taking place amid Falta tight security.
Falta went to the polls for the first time on April 29. On May 3, a day before counting was to take place, the Elections Commission of India (ECI) announced repolling in all 285 booths of the constituency, after complaints of threats to voters and EVM tampering.
Khan, known to be close to TMC national general secretary and MP Abhishek Banerjee had got into trouble ahead of the polls after locals complained that he and his henchmen were moving around the constituency, threatening voters.
The re-polling on May 21 saw a voter turnout of more than 87%. According to ECI figures, 2.36 lakh voters turned up.
Till now, Panda has got 1,03,089 votes. This means that he will end up with a vote percentage of over 50%, which will be a record in this year’s Assembly elections in the state.
