The Congress has announced a list of 53 candidates for the Assembly election in Arunachal Pradesh scheduled on April 11. The party is expected to come out with the names for the remaining seven seats by Sunday evening.
Among the 53 in the first list, brought out late on Saturday night, are three women -- Dayum Para for the Tali seat, Yaman Bagra for Along West, and Komoli Mossang for Nampong.
Former MP and State Congress president Takam Sanjoy, who is contesting the Lekang seat, justified the delay in announcing the names saying time was taken to select the “deserving candidates.” The candidates have only until March 25 to file their nomination papers.
“We took time to give tickets to the right and deserving candidates," he told The Hindu , adding that seven more names would be announced on Sunday.
The Congress has retained seven of the 42 MLAs who had won in the 2014 Assembly election with the majority having switched over to the Bharatiya Janata Party in December 2016 after several months of political instability. Half a dozen candidates who lost the 2014 polls to the BJP and People's Party of Arunachal have been retained too.
They include former Chief Minister Nabam Tuki, who is contesting his pet Sagalee seat. Mr. Tuki is also the Congress candidate for the Arunachal West Lok Sabha constituency.
On the other hand, Ninong Ering, the party's MP from the Arunachal East constituency is contesting the Pasighat West seat. Former Congress MLA James Lowangcha Wanglat is the party's candidate for this parliamentary seat. Party insiders, however, said the Congress may have missed a trick with regional and other national parties picking up legislators and senior leaders ignored or dropped by the BJP.
Opposition parties in Arunachal Pradesh have had the habit of waiting till the last moment to pick up leaders or prospective candidates by the party in power. This was primarily the reason why the Congress had won 11 of the 60 seats uncontested to retain power in 2014.
“Indications are that the BJP is on a stronger wicket than the Congress, which is why most of the discards moved to the allies of the saffron party who can be called BJP’s B-team,” Amar Sangno, Itanagar-based political analyst said.
More than a dozen BJP discards, including two ministers, have joined either the National People’s Party (NPP) or the Janata Dal (United). The NPP, headed by Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma, is a member of the BJP-fronted North East Democratic Alliance, an anti-Congress forum.
Apart from the JD(U), former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular) is also contesting the Assembly election in Arunachal Pradesh scheduled on April 11. This is the first time that multiple parties with the ‘national’ tag are contesting the polls in the Frontier State.
While the BJP has named candidates for all 60 seats, the NPP has fielded 33, the JD(S) 18, the JD(U) 13 and the regional People’s Party of Arunachal nine.
