Devashish Sharma wins Nagaon by 1,42,224 votes over Badruddin Ajmal

Devashish Sharma of the Bharatiya Janata Party won the Nagaon Lok Sabha by-election on Friday with 7,14,349 votes, a margin of 1,42,224 over Mohammed Badruddin Ajmal. Ajmal, contesting for the All India United Democratic Front while still the sitting MLA from Binnakandi, received 5,72,125 votes. Congress candidate Sibamoni Bora finished third with 1,29,492. Fifteen candidates were on the ballot.

Counting began at 8 a.m. Postal ballots were taken first, then the votes on electronic voting machines. The count ran at two centres, with election officials and the candidates' agents present. Sharma is a former deputy commissioner of Nagaon. He retired from government service before the party named him.

The seat and the numbers

Nagaon went to the poll on 6 October with 19,02,009 voters on the roll. Turnout at the close that day was 76.16 percent. A magnitude 4.5 earthquake was recorded in the district at 04:23 that morning, with no damage entry on the National Center for Seismology page. Polling went ahead. The by-election was one of six held the same day, with assembly seats in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry counted on the same Friday.

The margin is large in raw votes and narrower as a share of the three main candidates. Sharma, Ajmal and Bora together account for 14,15,966 votes. Sharma's share of that three-way total is about 50.5 percent. Ajmal's is about 40.4 percent. Bora's is about 9.1 percent. In a constituency where AIUDF has long treated the Muslim vote as its base, a BJP lead of 1.42 lakh over the party chief is the figure the state unit will carry into the next cycle. It is not a wipeout of the second place. Ajmal still polled more than Congress by a factor of about four.

Why the seat was empty

The vacancy followed the rule that a candidate who wins two seats must resign one. The Nagaon by-election sat in that set, alongside Nandigram, Rejinagar, Madurantakam, Dharapuram and Thattanchavady. On the same count, the BJP held Nandigram by 1,22,753 votes and took Rejinagar by 75,816, taking its assembly tally in West Bengal to 209 of 294. Those are assembly seats. Nagaon is a Lok Sabha seat, so it changes the Assam delegation in the lower house, not the numbers in Dispur.

Sharma's path into the ticket is the local detail. A retired district commissioner running for the party that holds the state government is a familiar Assam pattern. It also means the new MP arrives without a legislative record and with a recent administrative one. Voters who dealt with his office as deputy commissioner are now his constituents. That is a different relationship from a career legislator returning to a seat.

What the count does not settle

Ajmal remains the MLA from Binnakandi unless he resigns it. A Lok Sabha win would have forced a choice. A loss leaves him in the assembly and leaves AIUDF without the Nagaon seat. Congress, third by a wide gap, does not have a claim on either the winner's voters or Ajmal's. The next filing that matters is the Election Commission's form for the elected member, and the date Sharma takes the oath in Delhi. Friday's verified result is the three totals: 7,14,349, 5,72,125 and 1,29,492, and a margin of 1,42,224.