Bypolls to five assembly seats and the Nagaon Lok Sabha seat were held on October 6 in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Assam, with Madurantakam recording the highest turnout at about 86%.
The turnout numbers are the headline. By 5 pm, all five assembly seats were above 78%, which is high for a bypoll, and Madurantakam closed at 85.99%, according to ETV Bharat.
The contests are local. Nagaon is a three-way fight between the BJP, Congress and AIUDF, Tamil Nadu has a triangular contest between TVK, the DMK and the AIADMK, and Nandigram pits the BJP against Congress.
A bypoll fills a vacancy and does not change who governs, so the results are best read as a snapshot of local sentiment rather than a forecast.
Counting is on October 9, and until then the figures are turnout and not results.
By 5 pm, Madurantakam led with 83.86%, followed by Nandigram at 79.39%, Thattanchavadi at 78.83%, Dharapuram at 78.53% and Rejinagar at 78.42%.
At the close of polling, Madurantakam recorded 85.99%, Thattanchavadi 80.81% and Dharapuram 80.31%, according to ETV Bharat.
Nagaon recorded around 76% turnout by 5 pm, with the final figure expected to rise as voters already in queues were allowed to vote.
Nagaon has 19.05 lakh registered electors and 15 candidates in the fray.
The main contest in Nagaon is between BJP’s Debashish Sharma, Congress’s Sibamoni Bora and AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal.
The by-election was needed after Pradyut Bordoloi resigned the seat and went on to win the Dispur assembly seat on a BJP ticket.
In Nandigram, BJP’s Hasirani Rath faced Congress’s Milan Pradhan, and in Rejinagar the AJUP’s Humayun Kabir was defending the seat.
In Tamil Nadu, the contest was triangular between TVK, the DMK and the AIADMK.
An EVM malfunction briefly halted voting in Assam’s Morigaon district, according to ETV Bharat.
Voting machine in India (representative image), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0