Nandigram polls at 20.89 percent by 9 a.m. as Kabir is arrested in Rejinagar

Voting in the Nandigram and Rejinagar assembly bypolls opened on Tuesday with an average turnout of 19.47 percent by 9 a.m. Nandigram, in East Midnapore, was at 20.89 percent. Rejinagar, in Murshidabad, was at 18.05 percent. The start was mostly quiet, then interrupted. Police arrested Humayun Kabir, founder of the Aam Janata Unnayan Party and a sitting legislator, in Rejinagar. The chief electoral officer asked the Murshidabad administration for a report.

A district officer said Kabir was accused of threatening police and grabbing an on-duty officer's collar. His son, Golam Nabi Azad, is the party's candidate in Rejinagar. Kabir himself is neither the candidate nor his son's polling agent. The officer said Kabir had broken the rules by moving between booths and making provocative statements. The arrest is therefore of a party founder who had no formal role inside the booth he was visiting.

Agents, booth numbers, and a rejected charge

The CPI(M) said its polling agents were refused entry at several booths in Rejinagar's Dadpur area. It named booths 112, 113, 114 and 122. In Nandigram, Congress candidate Milan Pradhan said BJP supporters had driven his agents out of booths. The BJP rejected the Congress charge. Two complaints, two constituencies, one morning. Neither has been ruled on. The electoral officer's request for a report is, so far, attached to the Kabir arrest, not to the agent complaints.

These two seats are part of a wider Tuesday poll. Voters were also called in Madurantakam, Dharapuram, Thattanchavady and the Nagaon Lok Sabha seat. Each vacancy exists because a winner who had stood in two places resigned from one. Nandigram is the sharpest of them politically. Suvendu Adhikari, who won it and also kept Bhabanipur, gave up Nandigram. Mamata Banerjee did not contest the bypoll. Trinamool named Sanchita Pradhan. The rival faction had said it would stand down if Banerjee stood. She did not. Tuesday's 20.89 percent is the first public measure of a seat being fought without either of the two names that defined it in 2021.

Why the early percentage is a weak signal

A fifth of the roll by 9 a.m. is a start, not a verdict. Bengal bypolls often fill in the late morning. The number that will matter is the final turnout, and then the count on 9 October. What Tuesday morning settled is narrower: Kabir is in custody, four booth numbers are in a CPI(M) complaint, and the Congress and the BJP are already disputing what happened to agents in Nandigram. Those are process facts. They can suppress a booth or they can be campaign lines. The report the chief electoral officer asked for is the document that will sort the arrest. It will not, by itself, sort the agent rows.

The count date

Counting is on 9 October. Three days is a long gap for a bypoll in which a party founder was arrested before lunch and agents say they were kept out of named booths. Parties will spend the gap on those claims. The Election Commission will spend it on the Murshidabad report and on any repoll request tied to booths 112, 113, 114 and 122. Adhikari, who cast his vote in Nandigram and said he would remain a voter there, is not on the ballot. The seat he vacated is being filled while he watches from Bhabanipur. That is the structural fact of this poll, underneath the morning arrest.