Kolkata, June 23 : Counting was underway for the Kaliganj Assembly constituency in the Nadia district of West Bengal, where voting took place on June 19.

After the first round of counting, Trinamool Congress candidate Alifa Ahmed is ahead of her nearest contest and Left Front-supported Congress candidate Kabil Uddin Shaikh by a margin of 2,715 votes.

The BJP candidate Ashish Ghosh is in the third position.

The counting started on Monday at 8 a.m. at the counting centre at Panighata High School, and the process started with the counting of the postal ballots. At the time the report was filed, the counting of postal ballots was yet to be completed.

The counting is being conducted under a blanket three-tier security cover. There are only Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) personnel in the innermost security circle, which is within the two counting halls.

Each hall has eight counting tables. The counting process is expected to be completed and the results announced by 12.30 p.m. There will be a total of 23 rounds of counting.

No one is allowed to enter the counting centre with a mobile or camera. Only the election observers and returning officers are allowed to keep mobile phones within the counting centre.

Bypoll to the Kaliganj Assembly constituency was necessitated following the sudden demise of its erstwhile Trinamool Congress legislator Nasiruddin Ahmed in February this year at the age of 70. Trinamool Congress candidate Alifa Ahmed is his daughter.

Nasiruddin Ahmed got elected for the first time from Kaliganj in the 2011 West Bengal Assembly elections, which marked the end of the 34-year Left Front rule in the state and the beginning of the Mamata Banerjee-led and Trinamool Congress-ruled regime.

However, he was defeated by Congress' Hasanuzzaman Seikh in the 2016 elections. After being out of the corridors of power for five years, Ahmed was again elected in 2021.

Kaliganj is among the five Assembly constituencies in four states that went for bypoll on June 19, the other four being Kadi and Visavdar in Gujarat, Ludhiana-West in Punjab, and Nilambur in Kerala.

/IANS