Bengal bypolls: BJP wins Muslim-majority Rejinagar assembly seat by over 75,000 votes

KOLKATA: The BJP on Friday won the Rejinagar assembly seat in West Bengal's Murshidabad district by a margin of 75,816 votes, making a significant breakthrough in the Muslim-majority constituency.

BJP candidate Shankharavh Sarkar polled 1,29,914 votes in the by-election, defeating his nearest rival, Aam Janata Unnayan Party (AJUP) nominee Golam Nabi Azad, who secured 54,098 votes, according to the results declared by the Election Commission.

BJP bagged around 63.14 per cent of the votes, whereas Azad secured 26.29 per cent.

The victory came amid a fragmented opposition, with the Congress, the Mamata All India Trinamool Congress and the breakaway Democratic Trinamool Congress (DTMC) failing to mount a competitive challenge.

Congress candidate Abdullahil Kafi secured 6,168 votes, narrowly ahead of Mamata TMC nominee Rabiul Alam Chowdhury, who polled 3,847 votes.

Safiuzzaman Saikh, the DTMC candidate, received 2,044 votes. The CPI(M) bagged 3,797 votes.

Rejinagar has a nearly 70 per cent Muslim electorate and has traditionally witnessed contests involving the TMC, Congress and regional political formations.

The BJP's victory puts the spotlight on the changing electoral equations in the constituency, though the result alone does not establish how individual communities voted.

The bypoll was necessitated after AJUP founder Humayun Kabir vacated the seat. Kabir, a former TMC leader who subsequently founded the AJUP, had won Rejinagar by more than 58,000 votes in the 2026 assembly elections, but retained Nowda.

His son, Golam Nabi Azad, contested the bypoll on the AJUP ticket.