Independents have claimed sizeable chunk of SDF vote bank, claim Golay supporters

GANGTOK, 07 Nov: “This Panchayat election has proved to be a battle between the Chief Minister and the public,” said MN Dahal while addressing a press conference today.
The recently concluded Panchayat election has seen a fall in the vote bank of the Sikkim Democratic Front [SDF] party in power for the past 19 years with independent candidates having won 5 Zilla and 92 Wards, he added.
Mr Dahal lauded the dissident SDF MLA, PS Tamang [Golay] for creating this environment of “pariwartan”, because of which independent candidates came forward to contest the panchayat election, he claimed.
Being the underdogs, the independent candidates got a lot of support from the public in their fight against the ruling party which already has a lot of power, and this is a mark of victory, he stated.
Even in the absence of a party, people came out on the field just because of PS Tamang, he further claimed and went on to add that when Mr Tamang does come up with a party, it is likely to come to power. Mr Dahal also refuted the claim of the Chief Minister’s Press Advisor, Bhim Dahal that Golay did not win a single seat in this Panchayat election.
Jacob Khaling addressing the media alleged that the administration manipulated the poll results but at the same time added that the SDF did not succeed in grabbing all the seats despite using money power or by any other means. He also alleged that the police had seized alcohol and money being distributed by Chief Whip, Ugen Gyatso Bhutia and former MLA Norzang Lepcha.
“The SDF party has proved with their activities that they did not win the election by convincing the people but by buying their votes”, added Mr Khaling.
He claimed that in the recently concluded panchayat election out of the 80% voter turn-out, 39% was cast in favour of independent candidates.
“This has given us a big boost and the wave of “pariwartan” has already started to flow. We will come very soon with our new political outfit for our supporters which will destroy the existing autocratic system”, he concluded.