BJP leader Pema Khandu will be sworn in as the chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh for the second term on Wednesday. The swearing-in programme will be held at the Dorjee Khandu Convention Centre here.
Khandu along with the BJP’s central observer Jagat Prakash Nadda, national general secretary in-charge of Northeast, Ram Madhav, North East Democratic Alliance (Neda) convener Himanta Biswa Sarma, state BJP president Tapir Gao and senior leaders of the BJP met governor Brig. (retd) B.D. Mishra at Raj Bhavan on Monday. Khandu staked claim to form the new government in the state.
The meeting of the BJP leaders and Khandu with Mishra came shortly after Khandu was unanimously elected as the BJP’s legislative party leader in Arunachal Pradesh.
In the meeting, Khandu informed Mishra about the BJP’s legislative party meeting — held earlier in the day — with the 41 elected members of the State Legislative Assembly and the unanimous decision of the newly-elected BJP legislators as their leader.
Under the provisions of Article 164 (1) of the Constitution, Mishra appointed Khandu to form the government and take oath as the chief minister on Wednesday. He requested Khandu to inform him about the names of those who will be appointed in his council of ministers.
Khandu won this year’s Assembly election from the Mukto seat in Tawang district for the third consecutive time. He defeated his lone rival Thupten Kunphen of the Congress by a margin of 2,602 votes. He won the Mukto seat in the 2011 byelection after his father and former chief minister Dorjee Khandu died in a helicopter crash that year in April. He was re-elected unopposed to the seat in 2014.
Though Khandu will be sworn in as the chief minister for the second term, this is for the first time the BJP will form its elected government in the frontier state.
The BJP exploited the infighting between rival parties to rule the state for the past two-and-a-half years. Congress managed to get only four seats this time in the 60-member Assembly.