Candidates of the Congress, which ruled Sikkim for more than four years after its merger with India in 1975, polled 50 votes fewer than NOTA (none of the above) in the 12 seats the party contested in the Himalayan State on April 19.
The 31 candidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) did better than their Congress counterparts but their total tally of 19,956 votes was 618 fewer than what Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang garnered for his ruling Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) in the two seats — Rhenock and Soreng-Chakung — he contested.
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The results of the 32-member Sikkim Assembly were declared on Sunday. The SKM won 31 of them while the Sikkim Democratic Front led by former Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling bagged one.
Mr. Tamang polled a total of 20,574 votes and he was the only candidate to score in five digits — 10,480 votes in Soreng-Chakung, his home constituency, and 10,094 in Rhenock.
A five-digit figure is a major achievement in a State with 4.62 lakh voters.
The Congress candidates mustered 1,228 votes across 12 constituencies, working out to 0.32% of the total votes polled. NOTA scored 1,278 in these seats, which was 0.99% of the total votes polled.
Forfeited deposits
In 2019, all the 12 candidates of the BJP forfeited their deposits after managing to get 1.62% of the total votes polled. The Congress fared poorer that year with all its 24 candidates garnering 0.77% of the votes and forfeiting their deposits.
Sikkim has not been a happy hunting ground for the national parties since 1985 when Nar Bahadur Bhandari’s Sikkim Sangram Parishad formed the government after 287 days of President’s Rule.
The BJP hoped to buck the trend, its confidence boosted after 10 SDF legislators donned saffron a few months after the 2019 polls. The party also won two seats in by-elections.
The confidence made the BJP contest 31 seats, but only two of its candidates — State unit president D.R. Thapa in Upper Burtuk and Tseten Tashi Bhutia in Sangha, a virtual constituency reserved for the Buddhist monastic community — were runners-up.
The newly formed and crowdfunded Citizen Action Party (CAP) performed better than the BJP. The regional party totalled 23,267 votes across the 30 seats it contested, which was 3,311 votes more than the BJP managed.
