New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has registered a thumping victory in Arunachal Pradesh, winning 46 of the 60 seats in the state legislative assembly and nearly wiping out the Congress, which dominated the state’s political landscape until a decade ago.
Led by Pema Khandu, who is set to retain his position as chief minister for the third term, the BJP had bagged 10 seats unopposed on 30 March itself, as the Opposition did not field any candidates in those constituencies.
The BJP secured 54.57% of the total votes cast in Arunachal.
Khandu and Deputy CM Chowna Mein are among the BJP candidates who won unopposed. In 2019, the BJP had won 41 seats.
A member of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the National People’s Party (NPP), which had contested 20 seats in the state Independently, came a distant second, winning five seats.
The Congress, which had fielded candidates in only 19 seats, won in one. In 2019, the party had contested in 46 seats and won four. Three of these four Congress MLAs had switched to the BJP earlier this year.
Former chief minister Nabam Tuki, the sole Congress MLA left after defections, was the party’s Lok Sabha candidate from the Arunachal West seat this time against BJP’s Kiren Rijiju.
The credit for BJP’s comprehensive victory, second time on the trot, will go to Khandu, who had engineered a major defection in the Congress in September 2016, walking away with 43 MLAs to the newly formed People’s Party of Arunachal (PPA).
Three months later, he joined the BJP, along with 32 other MLAs of the PPA. At the time, BJP had been in power in Arunachal Pradesh only once, when Gegong Apang had walked over to the party from the Congress with a clutch of MLAs in 2003.
Khandu, who had declared assets of Rs 332 crore in his poll affidavit, is the son of former chief minister and Congress stalwart Dorjee Khandu, who died in an air crash in April 2011.
The Ajit Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party, which had fielded candidates in 15 constituencies, won three of them. BJP, having secured a comfortable majority, has so far said that it will not strike any post-poll alliance.
In 2019, the Janata Dal (United) had also bagged seven seats, having contested 15. This time, the party, led by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, did not have candidates in the fray in Arunachal Pradesh.
Among the remaining seats, PPA won two, while Independent candidates bagged three.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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