MNF bounces back to power in Mizoram
aizawl — The MNF on Tuesday returned to power in Mizoram after a decade, securing 26 seats, five more than an absolute majority in the 40-member Assembly. With this, the MNF has ousted the Congress from power in its last bastion in the Northeast.
The Mizo National Front (MNF) had got only five seats in the 2013 Assembly polls, while the Congress had won 34. This time, the ruling Congress has got only five seats.
In a significant political development, Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM) — a forum of six local parties in Mizoram and the NGO-turnednewly-floated party the People’s Representation for Identity and Status of Mizoram — secured eight seats out of the 40 seats it had contested for as Independents.
The Congress had taken power in the state in both 2008 and 2013 elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party made its entry into the Mizoram Assembly winning the Tuichawng seat.
Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla
lost in both Champhai South and Serchhip constituencies to MNF’s T.J. Lalnuntluanga and ZPM president Lalduhoma, respectively.
MNF supremo and chief ministerial candidate Zoramthanga won the Aizawl East-I seat for the fifth term, defeating Independent candidate K. Sapdanga. — hyderabad — K Chandrasekhar Rao’s TRS on Tuesday steamrolled a feeble opposition challenge to win the assembly elections by a landslide, riding pro-Telangana sentiments and the success of a raft of populist schemes launched by his government.
Rao, 64, who emerged as the mascot of Telangana pride when he led the massive movement that convulsed undivided Andhra Pradesh and ended with the creation of the youngest state of the country in 2014, powered his party winning 82 seats in the 119-member assembly.
Rao himself won by a margin of over 51,000 votes from his Gajwel seat, trouncing V Pratap Reddy of the Congress.
Rao’s son K T Rama Rao and nephew T Harish Rao, both ministers in his caretaker government, also won by impressive margins.
The newly elected lawmakers of the TRS will meet here at 11.30am on Wednesday to formally elect Rao as the leader of the legislature party.
The ‘Praja Kutami’ (People’s Front), a 4-party opposition alliance led by the Congress that included Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP, CPI and the newly formed Telangana Jana Samiti, cut a sorry figure together winning 21 seats.
The Congress had just 19 seats in its kitty, two less that what it won in the last polls, while the TDP could win only two against its tally of 15 seats in 2014. The two other coalition partners failed to open their account.
Telangana was the only state among the five where results of assembly polls were declared on Tuesday that the Congress had cobbled together a coalition amid the talk of formation of a broad-based alliance to take on the BJP-led NDA in the Lok Sabha polls next year.
Buoyed by a string of electoral successes in assembly elections, the BJP ploughed a lonely furrow after the TDP walked out of the NDA a few months ago. However, the TRS juggernaut put paid to all hopes the saffron party might have had of making inroads into Rao’s citadel.
The BJP, which had won five seats in the last assembly polls in 2014 held in undivided Andhra Pradesh that it contested in alliance with the TDP, had to be content with just one seat out of the 118 where its candidates tried their luck. —