Kolkata, June 23 (IANS) Trinamool Congress is headed for a landslide victory in the Kaliganj Assembly bypoll in Nadia district of West Bengal, with party candidate Alifa Ahmed widening her lead as counting progresses.

At the end of the 12th round of counting, Ahmed had secured 56,404 votes, increasing her lead margin to 30,967 votes. Her closest rival, BJP’s Ashish Ghosh, had polled 25,437 votes, while Congress candidate Kabil Uddin Shaikh — backed by the Left Front — was close behind with 18,770 votes.

The bypoll has seen a close contest emerge between the BJP and Congress for the second position, even as TMC appears to be heading towards a decisive win. A total of 23 rounds of counting are scheduled.

Interestingly, Alifa Ahmed’s current vote tally has already crossed the combined votes of her BJP and Congress rivals. The trend suggests she may surpass the winning margin of her late father, Nasiruddin Ahmed, the former TMC MLA from Kaliganj, whose sudden death in February this year at the age of 70 necessitated the by-election.

In the 2021 Assembly elections, Nasiruddin Ahmed had won the Kaliganj seat by a margin of 45,987 votes, defeating the BJP’s Abhijit Ghosh.

Kaliganj is a minority-dominated constituency, with Muslim voters comprising nearly 60 per cent of the electorate.

Counting began at 8 a.m. on Monday at Panighata High School, starting with postal ballots. Postal ballots had been fully counted, and EVM vote counting was underway.

Security at the counting centre is tight, with a three-tier arrangement in place. Only Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) personnel are deployed in the innermost security ring, inside the two counting halls.

Each hall has eight counting tables. Final results are expected to be announced in the afternoon.

–IANS

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