Despite his daughter retaining the Tura Parliamentary seat, serious cracks appeared to surface in NCP leader PA Sangma's bastion in Meghalaya with Agatha Sangma securing a far reduced margin over her Congress rival.
Agatha, who had won her father's seat with a convincing margin of 99,855 votes over her Congress rival in last year's by-poll, got a margin of 17,945 votes this time.
Congress' Deborah Marak, touted by many as a loser even before she filed her nomination, said, "what makes me happy is the fact that even though I had campaigned for the party single-handedly, the campaign ensured that the winning margin of the NCP has been reduced to 17,500 while they (NCP) were confident of winning the seat on a margin of more than one lakh votes.
This shows that the Congress is once again emerging as a strong party in Garo Hills," she said.
Significantly, no senior NCP leader, even those from the state, had campaigned for Deborah as the NCP was confident about P A Sangma's hold in Tura.
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