ECI orders repoll at Karimganj North booth after BJP-Congress clashes

The Election Commission of India on April 10 ordered a re-poll at one polling station in Assam's Sribhumi district, after clashes between supporters of the BJP and Congress disrupted voting a day earlier.

The re-poll has been directed at booth number 239 — the Babyland High English School — in the 123-Karimganj North constituency. Voting will be held on Saturday, April 11, from 7 am to 5 pm.

The order makes this the only re-poll out of the 63,084 polling stations that went to the vote across Assam, Kerala and Puducherry on April 9, as well as four bye-election constituencies in Karnataka, Nagaland and Tripura.

Karimganj North, situated in the Barak Valley, has 14 candidates in the fray, with the principal contest shaping up as a three-way fight between BJP's Subrata Bhattacharjee, Congress's Jakaria Ahmed and AIUDF's Choudhury Hibbur Rasul Usama Mabrur. The sitting MLA for the seat, Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha, formally joined the BJP in March after a long period of suspension from the Congress, making this one of the more politically charged contests in the district.

Karimganj North has a total of 2,59,644 registered electors as per the 2026 electoral rolls, comprising 1,32,442 male and 1,27,201 female voters.

Polling-day violence was not limited to Karimganj North. Trouble also erupted at a booth in Rangamati under the Patharkandi constituency in Sribhumi district, where Congress candidate Kartik Sena Sinha allegedly entered the polling station and accused officials of allowing fake voters to cast ballots. When the presiding officer rejected the claim, Sinha allegedly damaged the Electronic Voting Machine, triggering a clash between Congress and BJP supporters that left around 25 people injured, two of them seriously. Voting was halted at that station for about three hours before resuming after officials replaced the EVM.

Assam recorded an overall voter turnout of approximately 85.91 per cent of its 2.50 crore electorate, though the Election Commission is yet to release the final figures. Elections to all 126 assembly constituencies in the state were held in a single phase on April 9.

The post-poll scrutiny that led to the re-poll order was conducted across all 296 assembly constituencies — covering the three state elections and four bye-election seats — in the presence of Returning Officers and General Observers appointed by the Commission. All 1,899 candidates were informed in advance of the time and venue of the scrutiny. The entire process was videographed, and polling documents were re-sealed with the Returning Officer's seal after the exercise concluded.