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WILLIAMNAGAR: The National People’s Party (NPP) has on Tuesday won the Williamnagar assembly seat with an overwhelming majority pushing the Congress to a humiliating third position in an election many had expected to be a cliffhanger between the two rival parties.
NPP candidate, Marcuise N Marak, defeated Independent candidate, Sengbath R Marak, by a margin of 4860 votes. The NPP candidate secured a total of 9558 votes (including 98 postal ballot votes) while Sengbath could manage to secure only 4698 (38 postal ballot votes).
It was a major setback for the Congress’s Deborah Marak who failed to even secure the runners up position making way for Independent Sengbath Marak. The sitting Congress minister and legislator, Deborah Marak, was a distant third bagging just 4517 votes (37 postal ballots).
The NCP candidate and Jonathone Sangma’s widow Krinilla Marak came in fourth place with a total vote count of 4009 votes (including 31 postal ballots).
Election to Williamnagar constituency was countermanded in February due to the killing of NCP candidate Jonathone Sangma by suspected GNLA militants. Polls were eventually held on April 27th with nine candidates in the fray.
Both the NPP and the Congress had vigorously campaigned to secure the seat even as the NCP, with Jonathone’s widow as candidate, made a serious attempt to turn the campaign in their favour.
During the six rounds of counting, NPP’s Marcuise Marak led from the start securing 1283 votes while Deborah Marak of the Congress could obtain only 863 votes. It was only in the first round that the Congress candidate with 863 votes had an edge over Independent Sengbath Marak (829 votes) to be placed in the second slot.
As the counting progressed so did the votes for the NPP, which began to expand its lead against its two nearest rivals ultimately leaving voters to ponder who among the two-Deborah and Sengbath would ultimately take the second runners up position.
The BJP’s tall claims of making a mark in the Garo Hills through Williamnagar turned out to be a damp squib with its candidate Santosh Marak forfeiting his security deposit by failing to win even a thousand votes. Santosh came a poor fourth with just 865 votes (including 5 postal ballots).
Percentage of votes polled: Out of 32,345 voters in Williamnagar constituency a total of 25,490 cast their ballot in this election. The NPP secured 37.5 percent of the votes polled while Independent Sengbath received 18.5 percent of the polled votes. The Congress candidate Deborah Marak came a close behind to Sengbath bagging 17.6 percent of the vote.