Itanagar: The stage is set for Tuesday's vote to elect a 60-member legislature in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh with the ruling Congress party emerging as the front-runner.
"Everything is in place for a free and fair poll," an election official said.
Polling personnel have already reached their respective destinations to conduct the elections, he added.
Voting would be for just 57 seats with three candidates already declared elected unopposed.
Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu and two more ruling Congress members – sitting legislator Tsewang Dhondup from Tawang constituency and debutant Jambey Tashi from the Lumla seat – were declared elected unopposed.
Khandu was elected unopposed from the Mukto constituency in Tawang district, bordering China, in the 1999 and 2004 Assembly elections as well.
A total of 157 candidates are in the fray with the Congress fielding candidates in all the 60 seats.
The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has fielded 36 candidates and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 22, although the surprise element is the Trinamool Congress with 26 candidates in the fray.
Of the 28 candidates fielded by the Trinamool Congress, five are former Congress party ministers and 10 are sitting legislators from the ruling party who were denied nominations this time.
An estimated 750,000 voters are eligible to exercise their franchise and security arrangements have been intensified across 2,000 polling booths in the state.
The fight for political supremacy would be between the ruling Congress party and a fractured opposition – two of them, the NCP and the Trinamool Congress, allies of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in New Delhi.
"We are confident of winning the polls as the people would vote for the Congress as our government was responsible for the overall economic progress of the state," Chief Minister Khandu said.
There is no Opposition in the present 60-member house – the Congress has 45 members and enjoys the support of 13 independent legislators and two legislators from the Arunachal Congress (AC), a regional party. Of the 13 independents, six have applied for Congress membership.
The political equations were different after the 2004 Assembly elections with the Congress winning 34 of the 60 seats, independents 13, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nine, and the NCP and the AC two each.
In subsequent years, the Congress managed to break the Opposition – the nine BJP and the two NCP legislators joined the ruling party, while all the 13 independents and the two AC legislators lent support to the Congress.
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