ECI declares October bypoll winners: BJP takes 3 seats, TVK sweeps Tamil Nadu

Winners across six seats

In Puducherry’s Thattanchavady (Assembly constituency 9), Ashok Anand of AINRC won with 13,358 votes. The Congress candidate, E Vinayagam, polled 4,876, leaving a margin of 8,482.

Tamil Nadu’s two bypolls delivered victories for the ruling TVK, led by Chief Minister Vijay. In Madurantakam (Assembly constituency 35), K. Maragatham Kumaravel won with 74,048 votes, defeating the DMK’s I. Paranthamen, who secured 54,008. The margin was 20,040.

In Dharapuram (Assembly constituency 101), P. Sathyabama won with 66,841 votes. The DMK’s S. Suganya received 57,370, and the winning margin was 9,471.

West Bengal’s bypolls went to the BJP. In Nandigram (Assembly constituency 210), Hasi Rani Rath polled 1,64,427 votes. In Rejinagar (Assembly constituency 70), Shankharavh Sarkar won with 1,29,914 votes.

In Assam, the Lok Sabha by-election in Nagaon was won by Devasish Sharma of the BJP, as reflected on the ECI parliamentary constituency results page.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the results in Assam, West Bengal and Puducherry reflected public support for the BJP-NDA’s “good governance agenda.” In a post on X on 9 October, Modi thanked voters, congratulated the BJP’s winning candidates in Nagaon, Nandigram and Rejinagar, and also congratulated AINRC, an NDA ally, for its Thattanchavady win.

The bypoll outcomes were immediately framed by parties as more than a handful of seats.

For the BJP, the wins in West Bengal and Assam offered an opening to argue that the party’s organisation remains competitive in states where it faces strong regional opponents. The Nandigram and Rejinagar results, in particular, will be watched for what they suggest about the party’s ability to convert campaign intensity into votes in politically charged pockets of West Bengal.

In Tamil Nadu, TVK’s sweep of the two Assembly seats was widely seen as the first electoral test for Vijay since becoming chief minister. The contests also carried weight because they were among the first opportunities for voters to register an opinion after the change in government.

The DMK, meanwhile, sought to blunt the impact of the twin defeats. DMK chief M.K. Stalin described TVK’s bypoll gains as an “interim victory for betrayal,” while arguing that the decline of “politics built on false images” had already begun.

In West Bengal, a separate dispute over voter-roll revisions surfaced alongside the political reactions. On 9 October, the state’s chief electoral officer dismissed as “misleading and speculative” claims circulated in an online analysis that deletions during the special intensive revision had directly influenced recent Assembly election outcomes. The officer said the electoral data cited did not support that narrative and also rejected a claim that women accounted for 62% of electors deleted through the exercise.

What happens next

With counting completed, the next step is administrative. The ECI’s results pages carry a note that figures displayed are entered by returning officers, and that final constituency data is shared in Form-20, the standard statutory result document.

Politically, parties are likely to use the results to sharpen arguments ahead of future contests. The BJP’s leadership has already presented the by-election outcome as an endorsement of the NDA’s approach to governance, while in Tamil Nadu the TVK will point to its two-seat sweep as evidence that its new administration is holding its ground.

For opponents, the bypolls provide a narrower, constituency-level set of numbers to contest campaign narratives, raise questions about local issues, and, where they choose, question the conduct around polling. Reports around the West Bengal contests included references to allegations during voting, though no official next steps were set out in the material available.

The immediate story, though, is settled: six seats went to three parties, and the scoreboard is now official, pending the routine publication of final Form-20 details.