Campaigning for Assam’s Nagaon Lok Sabha by-election ended on October 4, moving the contest into its final pre-poll phase before voting on October 6. Hindustan Times reported the closure. The Times of India’s late-evening account also described the campaign ending. The new development is the completion of campaigning, rather than a newly announced election date.
The Election Commission had fixed the timetable on September 7. Its original release schedules polling for October 6, counting for October 9 and completion of the election process by October 11. Those dates remain the background to Sunday’s transition. The release identifies Pradyut Bordoloi’s resignation as the reason for the Nagaon vacancy.
Among the principal contenders are the BJP’s Devasish Sharma, Congress nominee Sibamoni Bora and All India United Democratic Front leader Badruddin Ajmal. Sharma is a former Indian Administrative Service officer, Bora a former legislator and Ajmal a serving legislator, according to the Times of India’s account. Their competing campaigns now give way to preparations for the vote; none has been declared the winner.
The same report describes welfare schemes, development and citizenship issues as prominent campaign subjects. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma led the NDA’s outreach, while Congress’s state president Gaurav Gogoi and other leaders campaigned for Bora. These are accounts of the campaign that has just ended, not measures of voter preference or a forecast of the result.
Nagaon is the only Lok Sabha constituency in the Commission’s six-seat by-election schedule. The other contests concern the Madurantakam and Dharapuram Assembly seats in Tamil Nadu, Thattanchavady in Puducherry, and Rejinagar and Nandigram in West Bengal. Akashvani’s October 4 bulletin also identified that six-seat scope, although this report’s independently corroborated completed-closure finding concerns Nagaon.
The Commission’s September notice provides for electronic voting machines with VVPAT at all polling stations and permits specified identity documents. These are pre-existing polling arrangements, not fresh rules announced as campaigning closed.