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On May 24, the vote count in Falta where the Election Commission had ordered a repoll, served as a postmortem of the Trinamool Congress’s loosening grip on Bengal’s politics.

Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Debangshu Panda secured 1,49,666 votes (71.2%), followed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s Sambhu Nath Kurmi who had 40,645 votes (19.34%). Congress’s Abdur Razzak Molla had 10,084 votes. The TMC candidate Jahangir Khan received a mere 7,783 votes (3.7%). Finishing fourth and forfeiting his deposit, Khan is a strange presence in a constituency nestled inside Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek’s once-celebrated Diamond Harbour fortress. Barely a month ago, Abhishek had claimed this fortress was impregnable.

The swing from 2024 could not be more dramatic. In the Lok Sabha election, the TMC had commanded Falta with 1,83,635 votes, while the BJP had received only 15,263, and the CPI(M) a mere 2,315. Abhishek’s historic Diamond Harbour triumph boasted a record 7,10,930 vote margin, with Falta alone contributing a 1,68,372-vote lead. 

In several Falta booths during the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the TMC had 99% of the vote, leaving the BJP and Left with zero or near-zero tallies. To anyone concerned with democratic competition, these numbers are unnatural. 

That is why Falta has become the public test of the Diamond Harbour model. In less than two years, it has moved from being that model’s crown jewel to the site of its demolition.

The repoll, therefore, carries significance far beyond one constituency in South 24 Parganas. To a national audience, Falta may look like another local result in the wake of a BJP surge, even though it is much more.

Falta is the clearest available test of what remained of TMC after the party lost the state government. The May 2026 assembly election had already ended Mamata Banerjee’s long rule, with the BJP winning 207 seats in the 294-member assembly and TMC falling to 80. Yet if statewide figures can blur the true condition of a defeated party, Falta has exposed it. 

The postal ballot figures make the collapse even more revealing. Cast before the regime change, when the TMC still appeared mighty and its power structure remained visibly intact, TMC secured 1,526 postal votes (around 85%), compared to the BJP’s 245, the CPI(M)’s 20, and the Congress’s five. This provides the starkest before-and-after image of the party’s crisis. When voters believed the Diamond Harbour model was intact, the TMC looked unbeatable. But,........

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