A total of 157 candidates are in the fray for 60 Assembly seats in Arunachal Pradesh, elections to which will be held on Tuesday. The Congress put up candidates in all 60 seats and three of them, including Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu, have been elected unopposed.
But for the other seats, the election has been rendered more interesting because in 2008, nine Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and Members of the Legislative Assembly crossed over to the Congress, plunging the most important Opposition party in a crisis as its numbers in the Assembly plummeted to zero from nine.
In the 60-member House, the Congress has 43 members, against 13 Independents and two each from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Arunachal Congress. The Congress has put up candidates in all 60 seats.
The NCP, which is Congress’ ally in the Centre and in Maharashtra, is pitted against it in Arunachal Pradesh, and has put up 36 candidates. Another Congress ally — the Trinamool Congress — has put up 26 candidates, including 10 sitting Congress MLAs who were denied tickets by the party.
