Muslim voters were turned away from polling stations in West Bengal’s Rejinagar on Tuesday while police and paramilitary personnel watched, according to Scroll, whose reporters were at the bye-election. Opposition workers allege the administration made widespread attempts to rig the vote for the ruling BJP.
What actually happened
At Teghari Primary School in Nazirpur village, a queue of Muslim women was moving quickly around 9 am, but barely anyone was joining it. Down the road, Scroll’s reporters saw people forcibly turning back Muslim men heading to the booth, with police and paramilitary personnel at the spot doing nothing. A policeman shouted at the men to disperse. The one villager Scroll reached said that talking on camera would get them detained.
In Maradighi, 12 km away, more than a dozen residents said they were not allowed to vote because their booths had been captured. They asked not to be named, fearing retribution. A young Muslim resident alleged that police told him his vote had already been cast and that voting had begun the night before, with only BJP agents present. Others stayed away because of the risk of violence. “Why take the trouble?” one resident asked.
Workers detained before polling day
Muslims make up between 60 and 70 percent of Rejinagar’s population, according to the 2011 census and local politicians’ estimates. Opposition candidates say the BJP cannot win it without state machinery. The seat fell vacant after Humayun Kabir, who won both Rejinagar and Nowda in 2026, retained Nowda. His party, the Aam Janata Unnayan Party, fielded his son, Golam Nabi Azad.
Kabir said that on the eve of voting, 64 of his workers were locked up, and he was detained himself the next morning. Police said he tried to influence voters without being a candidate or agent. Azad said police had been breaking into workers’ homes every night to pick them up in old cases. CPI(M) candidate Mohammed Sayeed said one of his polling agents was detained hours before the vote. A Trinamool Congress leader alleged that the identification papers of his polling agents were snatched and their phones switched off after 8.30 am.
Journalists blocked
In the week before the poll, the Facebook pages of prominent local journalists in Murshidabad were blocked in India, and many were restored only after voting ended on Tuesday evening. Alt News found at least a dozen restricted pages, while local journalists put the number at 25 to 30.Among the worst affected was Swapan Karikar’s Murshidabad Today, which has close to 7.5 lakh followers and was blocked on September 29. Karikar showed Scroll a copy of the blocking order he received. He said he had earlier received takedown notices for videos he made about police detaining Aam Janata Unnayan Party workers in late-night drives. He believes the pages were silenced because independent reporters can show what is happening on the ground, and says that had his page stayed up, Kabir’s son would have won comfortably.
Baktar Sheikh, who runs Murshidabad News Time with more than 3.7 lakh followers, said he lost about Rs 80,000 in advertising revenue. He said he went to the cyber crime department, which told him Meta was responsible. Most of his page covers local news, he said, and a family accusing police of barging into their home is news whatever its political ties. He said he would cover it the same way if the family were linked to the BJP.
Murshidabad’s Superintendent of Police told Alt News that those affected “are not accredited journalists.” The reports reviewed do not establish who ordered the restrictions.
Same pattern in Nandigram
The other bye-poll, in Nandigram, was also marked by controversy. A Trinamool candidate withdrew after meeting Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, and the Congress nominee, Milan Pradhan, was arrested in decades-old cases before being released on bail to campaign.
The Commission’s answer
The Election Commission’s general observer in Rejinagar, Harshal Pancholi, said that the bye-poll was free and fair, citing video evidence. Asked about the specific polling stations, he promised to cross-check. however, Ground reports tell us that the police observer did not answer further calls through the day. The BJP candidate could not be reached.
The Commission has the means to settle this with polling-station-wise video and records. Until it does, the question from Maradighi stands: who told these voters to leave, and why was it allowed?
