Itanagar, Jul 16: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Arunachal Pradesh has swept the Panchayat bye-elections by bagging over 80 per cent Gram Panchayat seats as the State Election Commission (SEC) on Saturday declared the results of the recently held rural body polls.
Remarkably, 116 out of the total of 130 seats of Gram Panchayat Members (GPMs) were elected unopposed, while one Zilla Parishad Constituency and 14 Gram Panchayat Constituencies were contested. Of the 116 GP seats declared unopposed, the BJP had bagged 101 seats, followed by Independents - 10, Congress and National People’s Party (NPP) - two each and Janata Dal (United) - one. A total of 31 candidates were in the fray for elections to the remaining 14 GP seats and the lone ZP seat - Upper Koloriang in Kurung Kumey district, State Election Commission (SEC) Secretary Nyali Ete said. He said, the polling held on July 12 was “by and large peaceful” barring a stray incident at 4/5 Tayeng polling station of 4-Upper Koloriang ZP Constituency which necessitated a fresh poll on July 14. Polling percentage for the Zilla Parishad Constituency and Gram Panchayat constituencies were 84.55% and 88.28% respectively. Counting of votes was carried out on Saturday in which the lone Zilla Parishad seat was won by the Independent candidate Bengia Tayang defeating his lone rival from the National People’s Party (NPP), Chello Tagar, by 98 votes. Out of the 14 seats of GPMs, the BJP won seven seats, NPP - three, JD(U) - two, Congress - one and Independent - one. With this, the total number of seats won by BJP has increased to 108. NPP secured five seats, while opposition Congress managed to win a meager three seats to share the ‘honour’ with JD(U). 11 seats went to Independents, as per figures released by the state poll body. The bye-elections were necessitated due to various factors such as rejection of nomination papers, non-availability of eligible candidates, law and order, disqualification under antidefection law, and death and resignation of the members elected in the 2020 general elections. Earlier, as a prerequisite to the actual conduct of the bye-elections, a special summary revision of the electoral rolls of the concerned Panchayat constituencies was also carried out and the final electoral rolls were published on May 30. 
Meanwhile, State Election Commissioner Hage Kojeen congratulated all the winners in the Panchayat bye-polls and conveyed his appreciation to the district electoral machinery such as DEOs, ROs, Observers, etc for the ‘successful’ conduct of the by-elections. It may be mentioned that in the general elections to the two-tier Panchayat bodies held in December 2020, the BJP had won 188 out of 242 Zilla Parishad seats and 6270 of 8216 Gram Panchayat seats. Independents emerged second by securing 23 ZP and 1035 GP seats, while the Congress bagged just nine ZP and 375 GP seats.

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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