The Election Commission on Saturday ordered repolling in the Falta constituency of West Bengal in the Assembly elections citing “severe electoral offences”.

Polling will be held in all 285 polling stations on May 21 and the votes will be counted on May 24.

The decision came ahead of the votes in the rest of the state being counted on Monday.

There were allegations of electoral malpractices in the constituency located in the South 24 Parganas district.

On Saturday, the Election Commission said that during the polling on Wednesday, it had received complaints from political parties and candidates, and there were reports “alleging application of black adhesive tape/perfume on ballot unit buttons of EVMs [Electronic Voting Machines] in favour of or against particular political parties”.

It also said that there had been allegations of voters being intimidated or obstructed, and physical and unauthorised presence of workers of political parties inside polling stations.

The poll panel said that there had also been several instances of persons accompanying voters casting votes on the elector’s behalf and that no video footage was available from some polling booths.

The polling in the state was held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. Voting in Falta was held on Wednesday. A party or an alliance needs 148 seats to secure a majority in the 294-member Assembly.

As polling was underway on Wednesday, the Bharatiya Janata Party had claimed that the state’s ruling Trinamool Congress had tampered with voting machines in Falta. It had claimed that the button next to the BJP’s election symbol had been taped over at several polling booths.

The TMC had denied the allegation and claimed that the BJP was raising false alarms as it was losing the state election, NDTV reported.

The poll panel had said at the time that repolling will be held in any booth where taping of voting machine buttons is verified.

The Election Commission had ordered an investigation into the allegations. The probe report said that voting machines in at least 60 of the 285 polling stations in the constituency had been tampered with, The Indian Express reported on Saturday.

Election Commission Secretary Sujeet Misra had informed the state’s chief electoral officer that “sufficient grounds” had been found to conclude that the polling process in several booths was “vitiated due to alleged application of black tape” on the buttons.

The poll panel said that the malpractice was a “subversion of democratic process”.

On Saturday, re-polling was being held in 15 polling booths of the Diamond Harbour and Magrahat Paschim constituencies. Voters in Falta held protests demanding repolling in the entire constituency, The Hindu reported.