THE BJP on Sunday returned to power in Arunachal Pradesh, recording a decisive victory that saw it increase its tally from 41 to 46 in the 60-member House, cementing its position as the most dominant party in the state. This is the most commanding win for a party in the state since 1999 when the Congress won 53 seats. The BJP significantly increased its already large vote share, from 50.86% in 2019 to 54.57%. Apart from the BJP's massive victory, the other significant takeaway of the election is the near wipeout of the Congress, which was in power in the state till Chief Minister Pema Khandu’s exit from the party with 43 MLAs in 2016. The Congress is now down from four to a single legislator, managing to bag only the western Arunachal seat of Bameng. Its vote share plunged from 16.85% in 2019 to 5.56%. The party’s fight for survival in the state was evident in its struggle to put up candidates. In the end, it had only 19 candidates in the fray. Though the BJP has not officially announced its decision on who will be the CM, Khandu is likely to return as CM for a third term. The BJP’s dominance was apparent when it won 10 seats unopposed even before the first votes were cast, including Khandu’s Mukto constituency and Deputy CM Chowna Mein’s Chowkham seat. Khandu told reporters that the result was a “reflection of the development work that has happened in Arunachal Pradesh in the last eight to 10 years”. Meanwhile, Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma’s National People’s Party (NPP) won five seats, coming second behind the BJP; the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) led by Maharashtra Deputy CM Ajit Pawar bagged three constituencies; and the People’s Party of Arunachal (PPA) won two seats. There are also three Independents among the winners. The three, two of the PPA’s winners, and one each from the NCP and NPP were BJP ticket aspirants who contested on their own or switched loyalties to other parties after the BJP denied them tickets. They were among 28 BJP members who were expelled from the party last month for contesting against the party’s official candidates. Both the NPP and the NCP (Ajit Pawar) are members of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) but state BJP leaders dismissed the possibility of a post-poll alliance and claimed that the BJP would form a single-party government in the state. Roing MLA Mutchu Mithi, who is one of the 10 candidates who won unopposed, attributed the BJP’s current dominant position in the state to its organisational strength and investments in the state. “The Prime Minister has come to Arunachal four to five times in the past five years. Whereas since our statehood, hardly three PMs had come earlier. There has been a lot of emphasis, even though we don’t have Lok Sabha numbers, but the BJP has recognised the strategic position of the state. The BJP’s organisation is also very strong and its Central government has made huge investments in Arunachal, especially in the roads-highways and aviation sectors,” he said. The script for Sunday’s outcome began to be written when MLAs from other parties began jumping ship en-masse to the BJP in the months leading up to the elections, in the hope of getting poll tickets. “No candidate wants to be in the Opposition in Arunachal politics,” said Prof Nani Bath, who teaches political science at the Rajiv Gandhi University in the state. As a result, the BJP’s tally in the outgoing House went up to 55. The biggest blow to the Congress came when Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Lombo Tayeng joined the BJP in March. Since then, it was an uphill battle for the party. “We wanted to contest more than 50 seats but then at a crucial time, the BJP pulled out our CLP and our MLA who was former Union Minister of State, Ninong Ering. Everyone was disappointed and demoralised because of this. Then we went ahead and fielded 35 candidates but the BJP did deals with 10 of them and they withdrew from the contest. Then 25 candidates filed nominations, and six of them withdrew at the last minute. This outcome is not a people’s mandate. This is an election fought by terrorising and weakening the Opposition in underhanded ways,” state Congress general secretary Kon Jirjo Jotham told The Indian Express. Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee president and former Chief Minister Nabam Tuki said in a statement: “We are definitely disappointed but not demoralised. We will introspect on the causes of defeat and work on the organisation in the coming days.”
