Eighth time unlucky for Congress veterans in AP

Winning elections for the seventh time is no guarantee that a candidate will retain his or her seat.

That is the message that people in Arunachal Pradesh have given by making their former chief minister and the leader of the opposition bite the dust in the state assembly polls.

Former state chief minister and Congress nominee Gegong Apang lost the Tuting Yingkiong seat, which returned him seven times earlier, to Alo Libang of NCP by 1,370 votes.

Apang, 62, had ruled Arunachal Pradesh for 23 years to be the second longest serving chief minister in the country after Jyoti Basu who was at the helm of affairs in West Bengal for one year more.

Former leader of the opposition Kameng Dolo, also a Congress candidate, was defeated by Trinamool Congress' Karya Bagang by 342 votes on Chayangtajo assembly seat. He had won the seat for seven times.

During the last assembly polls, Dolo had won on a BJP ticket and went on to become the leader of the opposition. He defected to the Congress in 2007 along with eight other BJP MLAs.