Tamil Nadu By Election Result 2026: Who Won Dharapuram?

Counting began at 8am on 9 October in six by-elections across four states, and two of them are tests of governments barely five months old. In Tamil Nadu, Madurantakam and Dharapuram decide how close Chief Minister Vijay's TVK gets to the majority it missed in May. In West Bengal, Nandigram is being fought with two rival Trinamool candidates on the same ballot.

Neither of those is a small thing, and neither is really about the seats themselves.

Tamil Nadu: the arithmetic behind two constituencies

In the general election declared on 4 May, TVK founded by the actor C. Joseph Vijay won 108 of 234 seats. That was the largest bloc but ten short of the 118 needed, and it produced Tamil Nadu's first hung assembly. M. K. Stalin resigned on 5 May. Vijay was sworn in on 10 May after showing the Governor a majority, and passed the floor test on 13 May, with Congress leaving the DMK-led alliance to join his government and four other parties supporting it from outside.

That is a working government that depends on other people. Which is why two by-elections matter more than two seats normally would.

Both were created the same way. Sitting AIADMK MLAs resigned on 26 May and joined TVK, and TVK renominated them: Maragatham Kumaravel in Madurantakam, now the party's deputy general secretary, and P. Sathyabama in Dharapuram. Madurantakam is reserved for Scheduled Castes and Dharapuram for Scheduled Tribes.

So the vote is a test of two things at once whether a defection converts into votes, and whether TVK's first months in office have held. One outlet covering the campaign framed it as a referendum on the government's first 100 days. By dtnext's count, taking both seats would lift TVK's strength to 109.

It is worth noting that TVK did not win either constituency in May. In Madurantakam its candidate finished second with 7,194 votes. Its candidates were pushed into the lower places in both. The party is contesting here on the strength of the sitting members it recruited, not on a record of winning these seats.

Provisional standings [PROV] replace before publishing. At round 6 in Madurantakam, dtnext reported TVK's Maragatham Kumaravel on 23,980 votes, ahead of the DMK's I. Paranthaman on 15,751 and the AIADMK's S. Kanitha Sampath on 14,111. Dharapuram was far closer: at round 7 the same outlet had TVK's P. Sathyabama on 18,690 against the AIADMK's K. Banumathi on 17,773 a gap of 917 with the DMK's S. Suganya on 15,988. Later in the count, India.com reported Banumathi ahead. That seat changed hands between rounds and should not be called from any single update.

For the AIADMK, under Edappadi Palaniswami, both seats are a demonstration that the party still has a base after losing six MLAs. For the DMK, a win in either would reassert the dominance it lost in May.

West Bengal: an opposition dividing its own vote

Nandigram is the seat that has defined Bengal politics since 2021, and it is empty because the man who holds it now runs the state.

The BJP won West Bengal in a landslide — 208 seats against the Trinamool's 80 — and Suvendu Adhikari became Chief Minister after defeating Mamata Banerjee in Bhabanipur. He also won Nandigram, and vacated it.

What makes the by-election unusual is the ballot. Five candidates are standing: Hasirani Rath for the BJP, the mother of a former Adhikari aide; Milan Pradhan for Congress; Santigopal Giri for the CPI; Sanchita Pradhan for Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool; and Mohammad Eteshamul Haque for a breakaway Trinamool faction. Two Trinamool candidates, one seat.

That split is not confined to Nandigram. Records of the assembly's composition show a Trinamool Congress rebel block holding 65 seats as of 13 September against the parent party's 15 — a near-total inversion of which faction commands the former ruling party's legislators.

When the BJP leads in Nandigram with Congress reported in second place, the arithmetic explains itself. Two Trinamool candidates dividing an anti-BJP vote in a seat the BJP already holds is not a contest the BJP has to win on persuasion.

Rejinagar, the other Bengal seat counting today, fell vacant for a more ordinary reason: Aam Janata Unnayan Party chief Humayun Kabir won both Rejinagar and Naoda and kept Naoda.

The other two seats

Nagaon, in Assam, is a Lok Sabha seat rather than an assembly one. It became vacant after Pradyut Bordoloi, who won it for Congress in 2024, joined the BJP and won Dispur in the state election. The BJP's Devasish Sharma faces Congress's Sibamoni Bora and the AIUDF's Badruddin Ajmal. Turnout was 76.19% across roughly 19.05 lakh electors. [PROV] Early trends had the BJP ahead.

Thattanchavady, in Puducherry, opened up when Chief Minister N. Rangasamy retained Mangalam. [PROV] The AINRC's Ashok Anand was reported leading. Turnout was 80.81%, down from 87.2% in the 2026 assembly election.

Turnout fell everywhere it can be compared

This is the quiet number in the set. Madurantakam polled 86.26% against 93.22% in the general election. Dharapuram managed about 80.3% against 89.89%. Thattanchavady fell from 87.2% to 80.81%. Nandigram recorded 80.89% and Rejinagar about 80%.

By-election turnout is almost always lower than a general election's, so this is not in itself a verdict on anyone. But in seats vacated by defection, a drop of seven to nine points is the kind of figure both sides will claim.

Five more Tamil Nadu by-elections are still waiting

Seven Tamil Nadu seats are vacant. Only two voted. Polls for Tiruchirappalli East, Ambasamudram, Viralimalai, Perundurai and Karur are on hold while election cases involving returned candidates remain pending.

Tiruchirappalli East is the one to watch there: it is the seat Vijay himself vacated after winning both it and Perambur in May. Until those five are filled, the assembly Vijay governs is missing five of its members, and the majority arithmetic everyone is counting today stays provisional in a second sense.