Election Commission sets 6 October for five assembly seats and Nagaon

The Election Commission of India on 7 September published a common timetable for byelections to five assembly seats and one Lok Sabha seat. Polling is on 6 October. Counting is on 9 October. The process is to finish by 11 October. The gazette notification is due on 9 September. The last date for nominations is 16 September, scrutiny 17 September and withdrawal 19 September. Electronic voting machines and VVPAT units will be used at every station. The model code of conduct applies at once in the districts concerned.

West Bengal will vote in Nandigram and Rejinagar. Nandigram fell vacant when Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari kept Bhabanipur, the seat where he beat Mamata Banerjee by 15,105 votes in the 2026 assembly election, and resigned the second constituency. Rejinagar opened when Humayun Kabir, who had won both Rejinagar and Naoda, kept Naoda. Those two vacancies turn a local bypoll into a running test of the new government in Kolkata.

Tamil Nadu will vote in Madurantakam (SC) and Dharapuram (SC). Both seats were won in 2026 by AIADMK legislators, Maragatham Kumaravel and P. Sathyabama, who later resigned to join the ruling TVK. The bypolls therefore measure whether those voters follow the sitting party or the party their former MLAs just joined.

Puducherry will vote in Thattanchavady. Chief Minister N. Rangasamy had won both Thattanchavady and Mangalam and kept Mangalam. Assam's Nagaon Lok Sabha seat opened when Pradyut Bordoloi, elected on a Congress ticket in 2024, resigned after leaving the party for the BJP.

The six contests sit on different political maps, but they share one administrative clock. District officers now work under the model code. Parties have four weeks to pick candidates and another two weeks of campaign after the withdrawal date. Because two sitting chief ministers created vacancies by choosing among dual seats, the results will be read as comments on those governments even though the sample is small.

Nagaon is the only parliamentary seat in the set. A former Congress MP now in the BJP defending or abandoning that ground will be watched beyond Assam. Nandigram carries heavier history. Adhikari's decision to sit in Bhabanipur and put Nandigram back on the ballot gives the Trinamool Congress a defined target and gives the chief minister a defined risk.

The Commission has not attached special observers' names to this note. It has attached dates. Those dates are now the constraint for every party that wants a name on the October ballot.