BJP wins both LS seats in Arunchal Pradesh, Kiren Rijiju re-elected

Itanagar, May 24 (PTI): The BJP in Arunachal Pradesh clinched both the Lok Sabha seats by huge margins going by the trend in favour of the Saffron party across the country.

Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Kiren Rijiju, who was locked in a multi-cornered contest in the Arunachal West Parliamentary seat with total seven contestants, won from the constituency by a huge margin of 1,74,843 votes defeating his nearest rival Nabam Tuki of the Congress.

Rijiju polled a total votes of 2,25,796 while Tuki could manage only 50,953 votes.

The junior Home Minister had won the seat in 2014 also by a margin of 41738 votes.

In the Eastern Arunachal seat, which too witnessed a multi-cornered contest with five candidates in the fray, BJP state unit President Tapir Gao wrests the seat from Congress.

Gao defeated his nearest rival Lowangcha Wangat of Congress by a margin of 69,948 votes.

Gao polled a total of 1,53,883 votes, whle Wanglat polled 83,935 votes.

Ninong Ering of the Congress won from the seat in 2014 by a margin of 12478 votes defeating Gao.

Gao had also won from the seat in 2009 general elections.

Over 13000 NOTA voters in Arunachal

Over 13000 voters in Arunachal Pradesh opted for the ‘none of the above’ (NOTA) option in the Lok Sabha as well as the simultaneous assembly elections, counting for which was conducted on Thursday, EC data said.

An estimated 13,283 voters this year was found to have opted to use the NOTA button in the state even as counting for four assembly constituencies is on.

It is the highest number of NOTA votes polled in the state in comparison to the previous elections.

During the 2014 assembly and Parliamentary elections in the state, an estimated 4948 voters had opted for the NOTA option which constitute over one percent of the votes polled.

This year NOTA votes were more than that bagged by some of the candidates.

The maximum number of voters who opted for NOTA this year were in Namsai constituency(581), followed by Chowkham constituency with 337 NOTA votes.

The lowest number of NOTA votes were recorded at Tali constituency in Kra Daadi district where the figure was just nine, according to available data of the Election Commission.