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GUWAHATI\/KOLKATA\/CHENNAI, 4 May:<\/strong> The ruling NDA is set to form the government in Assam for the third time in a row after securing a majority with the alliance, winning 99 seats in the 126-member Assembly on Monday as the counting was progressing.<\/p>\n While the BJP won 81 seats till 8 pm, its allies – the Bodo Peoples’ Front (BPF) and the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) – secured nine seats each.<\/p>\n Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma won the Jalukbari constituency for the sixth consecutive term, defeating Congress candidate Bidisha Neog by 89,434 votes.<\/p>\n Sarma’s winning margin was 1,01,000 votes in 2021 when he became the chief minister of the state for the first time.<\/p>\n Sarma, who was leading from the first round, polled 1,27,151 votes, while Neog secured 37,717 at the end of the 13th round of counting.<\/p>\n He had failed to win his first poll from the Jalukbari constituency in 1996, but his winning streak continued from 2001.<\/p>\n His victory margin kept increasing in the subsequent polls till 2021.<\/p>\n In the opposition camp, the Congress won seven seats and was leading in 12, while the AIUDF, Raijor Dal and Trinamool Congress bagged one seat each. Raijor Dal president Akhil Gogoi retained the Sibsagar Assembly constituency for the second consecutive term, defeating the BJP’s Kushal Dowari by 17,272 votes.<\/p>\n In a major blow to the Congress, its state president Gaurav Gogoi lost in Jorhat to veteran politician and sitting BJP MLA Hitendranath Goswami by 23,181 votes.<\/p>\n Goswami’s win also halted Gogoi’s debut attempt to enter the state Assembly, with the Congress leader currently serving as a third-term MP from Jorhat in the Lok Sabha.<\/p>\n The BJP’s Pradyut Bordoloi, who switched over from the Congress ahead of the Assam Assembly polls, won the prestigious Dispur constituency by defeating<\/p>\n Mira Barthakur Goswami by 49,667 votes, according to the Election Commission.<\/p>\n Bordoloi polled 1,03,337 votes, while Goswami of the Congress secured 53,670 votes.<\/p>\n INC won 15 seats and was leading in four in Assam.<\/p>\n The BJP was for a decisive win over the TMC in long elusive West Bengal, while actor-politician Vijay’s TVK made a stunning debut in Tamil Nadu as the largest single party in terms of seats won or led.<\/p>\n As votes were counted for Assembly elections in West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry, Election Commission trends showed a wipeout of the Left and a solitary win for the Congress that has been battling diminishing electoral returns. That silver lining for the opposition party came from Kerala, where the Congress-led UDF won or was leading in 101 of the 140 Assembly seats,while the CPM-led ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) was ahead in just under 40 constituencies.<\/p>\n The cynosure of Election 2026, however, was West Bengal, the eastern state where the Trinamool Congress was eyeing a fourth straight term in its only bastion.<\/p>\n According to the Election Commission, the BJP won or was ahead in 195 of the 294 seats, well ahead of the magic number of 147, power in the state finally within its grasp. The Trinamool Congress tally was 90.<\/p>\n As counting progressed, power for the TMC seemed to be pulling away further and further. The state’s political landscape was changing with the BJP, its campaign spearheaded by Amit Shah with Modi as its lodestar, pushing ahead in border, tribal and industrial regions, while the TMC held ground in parts of Kolkata and select rural strongholds.<\/p>\n More than 2.5 lakh personnel of the Central Armed Police Forces, along with state police, were deployed with the TMC and BJP engaging in showdownsoutside several strongrooms where EVMs were stored in the run-up to the counting.<\/p>\n “The BJP will form the government,” said a confident Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, as his party seemed poised for a historic breakthrough in the city.<\/p>\n West Bengal was one headline of Election 2026; the other was superstar Vijay, who defied the odds and the taint of a stampede during his rally in September 2025 in which 41 people were killed. That was clearly in the past as his party broke bipolar Dravidian politics and was poised to become the largest single party in Tamil Nadu with wins and leads in 109 of the state’s 234 seats.<\/p>\n The ruling DMK that had started the morning at number three position was at 61, and the AIADMK at 44.<\/p>\n Chief Minister MK Stalin was trailing in Kolathur by 8,284 seats. According to Election Commission data, 15 other ministers were also lagging behind.<\/p>\n The choice, it appeared, was clear. Joseph Vijay Chandrasekhar could well join the pantheon of MGR and Jayalalithaa as the stars who made it big in the political firmament.<\/p>\n The star of hits such as Mersal and Leo went into the campaign with a list of lofty poll promises, including 8 gm gold for marriage, worth about Rs 1.12 lakh. Vijay’s assurances in the party manifesto included Rs 2,500 monthly assistance for women below 60 years of age, 8 gm gold for marriage, and six free cooking gas cylinders a year per family.<\/p>\n In Kerala, Sunny Joseph, the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) chief, said the numbers indicated a pro-UDF trend in the state and expressed confidence that the UDF would reach the 100-seat mark in the 140-strong assembly.<\/p>\n In Puducherry, the All India NR Congress had won or was ahead in 11 of the 30 seats. The DMK stood at five and the BJP at four. The TVK made its presence felt with three. (PTI)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" GUWAHATI\/KOLKATA\/CHENNAI, 4 May: The ruling NDA is set to form the government in Assam for the third time in a row after securing a majority with the alliance, winning 99 seats in the 126-member Assembly on Monday as the counting was progressing. While the BJP won 81 seats till 8 pm, its allies – the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282256,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-282228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-state-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282257,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282228\/revisions\/282257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}