On Saturday, May 3, Election Commission of India announced re-election in all 285 polling stations of the Falta assembly seat in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district. The re-election will take place on May 21, and the result will be announced on May 24.
The repoll was ordered after locals in the area protested saying that TMC cadres threatened and intimidated them during the polls. Now, security personnel from CRPF and RAF have been deployed in the area.
There were also allegations of large scale rigging during the polling, and the CCTV footage going missing for several hours. Notably, Falta is part of the Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha constituency, a stronghold of TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee.
Falta has seen full on rigging. ECI has tracked down missing CCTV footage for long gap hours. Multiple instances of large companions casting votes has also been found. This is extremely shocking, where were the Forces ? @ECISVEEP W/o Admin backing, this is impossible to pull off pic.twitter.com/k8tBb3hJ0A
— Sudhanidhi Bandyopadhyay (@SudhanidhiB) May 2, 2026
TMC’s Jahangir Khan is their MLA candidate from there. Locals have said that he even came to threaten them.
VIDEO | South 24 Parganas, West Bengal: Residents of Hasimnagar allege harassment by TMC workers.
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) May 2, 2026
A voter says, "This has been happening since yesterday. TMC goons entered our village, harassed women and beat up people. The head of our gram panchayat is from TMC and he is not… pic.twitter.com/OSAbzhrDkh
Notably, ECI had earlier said that if any discrepancy is found in the CCTV coverage of cameras installed by the state government, or of any other kind, they will take over, and order repolling wherever these discrepancies are detected. Earlier, on May 2, they had ordered repolling in 15 booths of 2 constituencies where such discrepancies were reported.
Now, they have gone a step further and ordered repolling in every booth of the Falta constituency.
This step is part of Election Commission’s endeavor to ensure free and fair elections till the last booth. While some people may be wondering looking at the exit polls that what difference will one seat make in a 294 seat assembly, the ECI is fully committed to ensuring the democratic right of voting for every Bengal resident.
It has been a result of all these ECI efforts that Bengal saw an election with minimal violence this time around. Though many people criticised the preparation by the Election Commission ahead of the polls, ECI’s results have shown that it was absolutely necessary.
And now, when people from one constituency protested that they were not allowed to vote freely, even their grievance has been heard and repolling will be done there with results coming out 20 days after the results of the other 293 seats.
However, the delayed date isn’t important, ECI ensuring that every valid voter’s demand is heard is more important.
