Election Commission sets 6 October bypolls for Nandigram, Nagaon and four other seats

The Election Commission of India on Monday, 7 September, set 6 October as polling day for five assembly seats and one Lok Sabha seat, with counting on 9 October and the entire process to close by 11 October. The model code of conduct is already in force in the districts concerned.

The assembly vacancies are Nandigram and Rejinagar in West Bengal, Madurantakam (SC) and Dharapuram (SC) in Tamil Nadu, and Thattanchavady in Puducherry. The Lok Sabha vacancy is Nagaon in Assam. Two other empty Lok Sabha seats, Shillong in Meghalaya and Basirhat in West Bengal, were not included. The Commission gave no date for those.

Gazette notification is due on 9 September. Nominations close on 16 September, scrutiny is on 17 September, and withdrawal ends on 19 September. Electoral rolls can still be updated until the nomination deadline, subject to applications filed at least 10 days earlier. EVMs and VVPATs will be used at every station.

Each vacancy has a political name attached to it. In West Bengal, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari won both Nandigram and Bhabanipur in the 2026 assembly election, defeated Mamata Banerjee in Bhabanipur by 15,105 votes, kept Bhabanipur and resigned Nandigram. Nandigram is the seat that defined the 2021 cycle, when Banerjee and Adhikari fought there as well. A bypoll in that constituency, with Adhikari now in office as chief minister and Banerjee out of government, is a test of whether the 2026 verdict holds at the block level.

Rejinagar fell vacant when Humayun Kabir, a former Trinamool Congress leader who founded the Aam Janata Unnayan Party, resigned. That contest is smaller in symbol and messier in party labels.

In Tamil Nadu the two scheduled-caste seats belonged to AIADMK members Maragatham Kumaravel (Madurantakam) and P. Sathyabama (Dharapuram). Both were among the rebel AIADMK legislators who backed Chief Minister Vijay's Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam government in a floor test and then left their seats. The bypolls therefore measure how much of those two constituencies followed the MLAs toward TVK and how much stayed with AIADMK or moved to DMK.

Puducherry's Thattanchavady is vacant because Chief Minister N. Rangasamy won both Mangalam and Thattanchavady, took the oath for a fifth term, and kept Mangalam. A sitting chief minister's second seat is usually a comfortable retain for the ruling party. It is still a vote after a double-win, which local opponents will treat as a referendum on the first months of the new term.

Nagaon in Assam has been empty since March, when Congress MP Pradyut Bordoloi resigned, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party and won the Dispur assembly seat. The Lok Sabha bypoll is the first chance for Assam voters in that constituency to answer the switch. Bordoloi won Nagaon for Congress in 2024. The BJP will try to convert his personal move into a party hold. Congress will try to keep the parliamentary seat even after losing the man.

Taken together the six contests are not a national wave test. They are six separate local readings of the last 12 months: a new chief minister in Bengal, a new chief minister in Tamil Nadu, a fifth term in Puducherry, and a high-profile defection in Assam. The Commission has packed them onto one calendar. Parties will still fight them as six campaigns.

Shillong and Basirhat remaining off the list means those electorates wait. The Commission did not say why. The practical effect is that the October 6 batch stays limited to the six seats whose vacancies were ready for a gazette. Candidates have a week from the notification to file. That is a short window in Nandigram and Nagaon, where the names on the ballot will be watched well beyond the two states.