The ruling People’s Democratic Alliance (PDA) candidate Tokheho Yepthomi defeated Naga People’s Front’s (NPF) C. Apok Jamir by a margin of 173746 votes in the by-election to the lone Lok Sabha seat from Nagaland.
Tokheho polled 594205 and Apok polled 420459.
Addressing media persons here after declaration of results , Commissioner Nagaland and Returning Officer for the bye-poll, M. Patton informed that out of the 11,97,436 electorate, a total of 10,14,664 cast their votes, while 3991 opted for None Of The Above (NOTA) option and three votes were tendered.
Counting of votes for the by-election was delayed for almost two and half hours after the scheduled start at 8 a.m. due to technical snags, Patton said.
The counting was held in the presence of two observers– J. Ravi Shankar and Sandeep Hans. During the process, 10 postal ballots were rejected because they were submitted at around 1.15 p.m. after the official counting time (8 a.m. as per ECI guidelines).
Patton also informed that out of 373 postal ballots 186 were found valid and 187 postal ballots rejected on various grounds.
Meanwhile, Prasielie Pienyü, chief agent of the NDPP/PDA candidate received the winning certificate from Patton at the Commissioner’s office on behalf of Tokheho Yepthomi.
Later in the evening, PDA partners organized a felicitation programme for the newly elected MP, Tokheho Yepthomi at hotel Vivor.
Tokheho polled the highest vote margin from Zunheboto district with 37,573 , followed by Kohima with 29,029 and Dimapur 27,543 votes. (See Table)
Tokheho Yepthomi, of the NDPP, was picked as the consensus candidate of the PDA comprising of—BJP, Janata Dal (United), National People’s Party and an Independent MLA, while NPF’s C. Apok Jamir had the backing of Congress and AAP.
The by-poll was necessitated following the resignation of Neiphiu Rio from the Lok Sabha to contest the Nagaland Assembly election in February.
Rio was elected as Lok Sabha MP in 2014 on an NPF ticket. Rio had secured over 7.13 lakh votes defeating his Congress rival late KV Pusa by a margin of over 4 lakh votes. However, ahead of the 2018 Assembly elections, Rio joined the newly formed Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) and was declared elected unopposed.