Friday morning ran on chai and constant refreshing. Counting began for five Assembly seats across Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Puducherry, plus the Nagaon Lok Sabha seat in Assam. The numbers kept moving, so treat everything below as a morning snapshot, not a final verdict.
Bengal: The Saffron Lead Keeps Stretching
Here’s the thing about these two seats. They’re the BJP government’s first major electoral test since its win in West Bengal earlier this year. So far, the BJP isn’t just ahead, it’s pulling away.
Nandigram and the Emotional Card
Suvendu Adhikari won both Nandigram and Bhabanipur in 2026, then vacated Nandigram and kept Bhabanipur. To fill the gap, the BJP picked Hasirani Rath, mother of Adhikari’s personal assistant Chandranath Rath, who was shot dead on May 6. That’s no random choice. It’s a story, and stories win votes. She’d even talked up a winning margin of 1.10 lakh votes.
Her main rival is Congress’s Milan Pradhan. Mamata Banerjee’s party isn’t contesting Nandigram at all, and she announced support for the Congress there. Rath was ahead from the early rounds. West Bengal bypoll results 2026: BJP grabs early lead in Nandigram, minority-heavy Rejinagar - The Statesman
Rejinagar, the Seat That Was Supposed to Be Tricky
Let me be honest, this is the one I was watching. Muslim voters make up more than 65 per cent of the electorate here. Even so, BJP’s Sakharav Sarkar went ahead by around 6,000 votes early on and later crossed 15,000 against the AJUP. West Bengal bypoll results 2026: BJP grabs early lead in Nandigram, minority-heavy Rejinagar - The Statesman
The seat opened up because Humayun Kabir won both Naoda and Rejinagar and chose to keep Naoda. His son Golam Nabi Azad is the AJUP candidate, and two rival TMC candidates, Congress and CPI(M) are all in the race too. That’s a lot of opposition names on one ballot, and a lot of split votes.
| Seat | BJP candidate | Main rivals | Morning trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nandigram | Hasirani Rath | Milan Pradhan (Congress) | BJP ahead |
| Rejinagar | Sakharav Sarkar | Kafi (Congress), Azad (AJUP) | BJP 15,000+ ahead |
| Nagaon (Lok Sabha, Assam) | Devasish Sharma | — | BJP 36,000+ ahead |
Tamil Nadu: Vijay’s First Real Exam
Both seats came open because sitting AIADMK MLAs K Maragatham and P Sathyabama resigned and joined Vijay’s TVK. So one party is fighting to punish the defectors, and the other has to prove the switch wasn’t a stunt. It’s the first electoral test for the TVK government since the April 23 election, and Vijay campaigned for four days. Edappadi Palaniswami accused TVK of using defections to protect its government.
Dharapuram: A Five-Vote Heart Attack
Dharapuram, a reserved seat in Tiruppur district, gave us the closest thing to a thriller. Look at round one.
| Round | Party | Votes |
|---|---|---|
| First | AIADMK | 2,639 |
| Second | TVK | 2,634 |
| Third | DMK | 2,019 |
| Fourth | NTK | 168 |
| Fifth | CPI | 70 |
Five votes. That’s less than a family wedding guest list. In round two, AIADMK’s K Bhanumathi stretched it to an 88-vote lead over TVK’s Sathyabama. And yeah, 88 votes is basically a rounding error, so anything can still happen here.
Madurantakam: TVK Pulls Ahead
Things look calmer in Madurantakam. After round three, TVK’s Maragatham Kumaravel had 12,197 votes, DMK’s I Paranthaman 8,959, and AIADMK’s S Kanitha Sampath 6,906. That’s a cushion of over 3,000.
Here’s the twist. In April, Maragatham won this seat on an AIADMK ticket with 34.95 per cent of the vote. Same candidate, new flag, healthier margin. And AIADMK, the party she left, is sitting third.
That’s where it gets interesting. DMK is running second, which fits how Vijay has framed the contest, TVK versus DMK, with AIADMK among the “others”. Whether that framing holds beyond one morning of counting is another story.
| Madurantakam, after round 3 | Votes |
|---|---|
| TVK (Maragatham Kumaravel) | 12,197 |
| DMK (I Paranthaman) | 8,959 |
| AIADMK (S Kanitha Sampath) | 6,906 |
Puducherry: Rangasamy’s Backyard Stays Quiet
Thattanchavady, the Easy One
Not every bypoll needs to be a drama. Thattanchavady is considered a stronghold of Chief Minister N. Rangasamy, and it fell vacant when he chose to retain Mangalam. It was an 11-cornered contest, but the real fight was AINRC’s Ashok Anand against Congress’s E Vinayagam and DMK’s K Sethu Selvam.
After the first of four EVM rounds, Anand had 3,209 votes, or 58.85 per cent of the round. By mid-morning, he led Vinayagam by 4,558 votes, with the DMK’s Sethu Selvam at 1,534.
| Round 1 (of 4 EVM rounds) | Candidate | Votes |
|---|---|---|
| First | Ashok Anand (AINRC) | 3,209 |
| Second | E Vinayagam (Congress) | 1,222 |
| Third | K Sethu Selvam (DMK) | 792 |
Congress has been struggling here for a while. In the general election, the NDA formed the government with 16 of 30 seats, and Congress won only one. Today’s trend looks like more of the same.
Three states, three very different moods. Bengal’s BJP is flexing, Tamil Nadu is a street fight between a four-month-old government and the party it poached from, and Puducherry is business as usual. Counting is still going, so some of these margins will shift. But the direction of travel is already clear, and it’s a lot more interesting than I expected when I woke up.