Pema Khandu being felicitated by BJP leader J P Nadda.
Credit: PTI Photo
Guwahati: The BJP is moving towards a majority in Arunachal Pradesh for the third straight term as the party candidates were declared winners in 24 seats and were leading in 22 others till 11:55 am on Sunday.
Congress, which once was the main political party in the frontier state till 2016, was on its way to being routed as none from the party was leading in all the 19 seats it contested.
Two other allies of BJP, National People's Party (NPP) and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), are leading in four and three seats respectively. Meanwhile, NPP has bagged one seat.
The opposition People's Party of Arunachal Pradesh (PPA) was leading in two seats. The PPA had won one seat in 2019.
The counting of votes for 50 Assembly seats began at 6 am on Sunday with BJP leading in several seats from the beginning.
Track latest updates of Arunachal Pradesh Assembly elections
Polling was conducted for 50 seats of the 60-member Assembly as 10 sitting BJP MLAs including CM Pema Khandu and deputy CM Chowna Mein were elected uncontested. The polling was conducted on April 19 and registered 82.95 per cent turnouts.
Poll battle:
The BJP, which was confident of retaining power, flagged the infrastructure development works during the campaigns while the Congress struggled to put up candidates in all the seats. The Congress continued to grapple with leadership crisis, even saw some leaders including MLAs switch over to the BJP ahead of the elections.
Arunachal Pradesh was a Congress stronghold till 2016 when CM Pema Khandu, who got elected from Congress in 2014, defected to BJP along with MLAs giving the saffron party its first full-fledged government in the frontier state. Khandu-led BJP government got re-elected in 2019 with 41 seats while several legislators belonging to JD-U and NPP also switched over to BJP later. JD (U), however, did not contest the elections this time.
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