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Our Correspondent
Kohima, May 31 (EMN): Sixty-five-year old Tokheho Yepthomi of the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), the consensus candidate of the ruling People’s Democratic Alliance (PDA) has been elected as member to Nagaland’s lone seat in the Lok Sabha.
Yepthomi defeated rival Naga People’s Front (NPF) candidate C Apok Jamir by a margin of 1,73,746 votes. Out of the 10,14,664 votes cast against a total 11,97,436 electorate, Yepthomi polled 5,94,205 votes and 4,20,459 voted in favour of Jamir while 3991 voted for NOTA (none of the contesting candidates). According to official figures, 187 votes were rejected and there were three tendered votes.
Yepthomi is a five-time MLA in the state. He joined active politics in 1981 and was elected to the 8th Nagaland Legislative Assembly in 1993. He got re-elected for the next four consecutive terms and had served as MLA, minister as well as leader of opposition.
Both Yepthomi and Jamir were former Congress-men. They were elected on Congress tickets in 2013 but merged with the then ruling NPF in 2015. The former went on to join the NDPP and they have both contested in the last state assembly election earlier this year and were defeated. Jamir is a former member of the Rajya Sabha.
The by-election was a fierce battle between the ruling PDA who backed Yepthomi while the NPF garnered support from its long-time adversary, the state Congress, on the justification that they were fighting against ‘communal forces’. The PDA on the other hand, comprises of the NDPP, BJP, JD , NPP and an independent MLA.
While the Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee (NPCC) through its president K Therie had gone out of the way to announce the party’s support to the NPF, it appears that all is not well in the what-used-to-be a grand old party, the Congress. A senior general secretary of the NPCC reacted to the result by saying, “Secularism-centric campaign backfired for NPF...People are going to be easily fooled by NPF donning the secular cloak after 15 long years with BJP in government that just ended three months ago.”
Meanwhile the Commissioner of Nagaland, who is also the Returning Officer (RO) for the Lok Sabha by-poll, M Patton during a press briefing late Thursday evening informed that following the completion of counting and declaration of result, the certificate of election was handed over to Yepthomi’s chief agent at the commissioner’s office.
It was learnt that out of 373 postal ballots, 187 were rejected as some did not sign the declaration form and some due to non-inclusion of declaration form. Ten postal ballots were rejected as they were received after the deadline while few were rejected ‘by the system itself’ and one vote was found unauthentic.
People do believe in PDA – Rio
Following the declaration of the result, a triumphant PDA organised a felicitation programme for the new MP, Tokheho Yepthomi at Hotel Vivor in Kohima Thursday evening.
Leaders of the coalition partners, while congratulating Yepthomi, acknowledged the people’s mandate. They expressed similar views that despite criticism from the opposition, the result testified their (PDA’s) strength in unity.
In the words of the Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio, winning by over 1.73 lakh margin is a ‘thumping victory’ for the PDA and the credit goes to everyone equally, the combined efforts of the people; the coalition party leaders and workers; and the PDA lawmakers. The mandate, according to him, showed that the people of Nagaland believed in the PDA to deliver them the goods.
Rio pointed out that the alliance’s adversaries had taken their campaign on ‘false propaganda’ to woo the people but it failed to fool the people and the PDA has proven to them that they had the absolute mandate of the people.
Mentioning that the Congress had always talked about secularism and labelled the BJP a communal party, he observed that both were secular parties. He questioned if BJP was not a secular party, why would it uphold the NDA alliance in the centre, accommodating other parties, while it had absolute majority in the parliament. He went on to point out that even in the Northeast, the party had upheld similar spirit and has accommodated minorities or parties with very few MLAs to the North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA). Therefore, projecting the PDA as though the BJP was all alone, and other parties like congress were secular so they could go together, was ‘totally misleading’. Rio asserted that such propagandas should be made known to the people.
Rio stated that Yepthomi will now represent all the Nagas including the PDA’s adversaries in the Parliament. While assuring all support and guidance to Yepthomi, he encouraged the latter to speak without fear or favour about the Naga history, the Naga identity, Naga special status, the Naga political issue and the top priority- solution to the Naga political issue. He urged Yepthomi not to hesitate to ventilate to the central leaders about Nagaland, its genuine problems, and also his visions for the nation and for the state, for the cause of the Nagas, and the political and development issues.
Stating that the victory called for celebration, he reminded that while celebrating the people must continue to be grateful to God and keep the unity of the alliance together.
The chief minister also expressed gratitude to people for believing in the alliance and his leadership and called upon all to work together in the same spirit of unity so as to implement their manifestos and coalition’s common minimum programme.
Tokheho Yepthomi, in his victory speech, expressed his gratitude to God, the people and the PDA coalition for giving him the opportunity to work for the people of Nagaland through a greater platform.
“Indeed, I humble myself to accept this responsibility with humility,” he said during the felicitation programme. He assured that he would take the Naga political issue and its settlement to the parliament as well as to the central leaders ‘to the extent possible’, as assured during his campaign.
He also expressed being overwhelmed by the result and that the margin by which he won was ‘way beyond his expectation’.
While assuring to give his best, alongside the PDA leadership, to work for the people of Nagaland, he admitted that he was going to be a new face in the parliament and would constantly require the guidance of chief minister Rio and minister CM Chang who had represented Nagaland in the Lok Sabha before.