Peoples’ Party of Arunachal to contest polls alone in State

Our Correspondent

Itanagar: The Peoples’ Party of Arunachal (PPA) on Friday dismissed claims made by Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) president Takam Sanjoy of forging a pre-poll alliance with the party.

“The party with regional identity will go alone to contest in all the 60 Assembly seats and two Lok Sabha in the April 11 simultaneous polls and will soon announce the list of candidates,” PPA chairman Kamen Ringu told reporters at he Arunachal Press Club (APC) here.

He said, party president Kahfa Bengia and secretary general Kaling Jerang had casual discussions with the Congress which was not endorsed by the party.

“We have temporarily suspended them for hobnobbing with the Congress on seat sharing without the knowledge of the party’s executive body. We will not forge any alliance with any national parties but will contest the polls alone keeping our regional ideology intact,” Ringu said.

Lashing out at the national political parties like Congress and BJP for neglecting the State, Ringu went on to allege that those two parties were trying to lure potential PPA candidates. On the party’s agenda for the polls, Ringu said it would be inclusive development for the interest of the indigenous people of the State.

“The people of the State are fed-up with the lip services of the Congress as well as the BJP government at the Centre,” Ringu said.

“Our main efforts will be to pursue the Centre to amend Article 317 (H) of the Constitution dealing with the State of Arunachal Pradesh to make it at par with Article 371 (A) dealing with the State of Nagaland and Article 371 (G) which deals with Mizoram, so that the people of the State enjoy ownership in the State’s resources,” he pointed out.

On the criteria of issuing party tickets, the PPA chief informed that it would be based on the clean image of the candidate.

The PPA had won four seats during the 2009 Assembly polls while in the 2014 Assembly polls, the party won five seats in the State. Later, all the five MLAs joined the Congress.

The frontier State has seen five governments under three Chief Ministers in the past five years.

Chief Minister Pema Khandu, who along with 33 MLAs, switched from the People’s Party of Arunachal (PPA) to BJP in July 2017 and formed the government with 12 BJP MLAs and independents.

Khandu was with the Congress when he formed the government in July 2017. Before Khandu became the chief minister, political uncertainty dominated the state after senior minister Kalikho Pul broke away from the Congress government of Nabam Tuki with 24 MLAs to form a PPA government in February.

Pul’s government was removed after a Supreme Court verdict reinstated Tuki. But with most Congress MLAs backing Khandu, Tuki had to resign in July. A dejected Pul committed suicide in Itanagar in August that year.

Next month Khandu left the Congress with 42 MLAs to join the PPA.

The poll notification would be issued on March 18 while the last date of filing nominations has been fixed on March 25.

Scrutiny of papers would be made on March 26 while the last date of withdrawal of nominations has been fixed on March 28. Counting of votes will take place on May 23.

Also read: Arunachal News