Gangtok:
Former Indian football captain Bhaichung Bhutia on Thursday joined the opposition party Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF) led by former Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling. At a rally in South Sikkim’s Rawangla, about 70 km from the state capital Gangtok, Bhutia merged the Hamro Sikkim Party (HSP), which he formed ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha and state assembly elections, with the SDF.
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Apart from the parliamentary elections in the state, assembly elections are to be held next year. Chamling welcomed Bhutia to his party by presenting him with a ‘khara’, a traditional scarf used in Tibetan Buddhism, and an SDF flag, while hundreds of party workers chanted slogans in support of the former Indian football captain. Bhutia also praised Chamling and said that Sikkim needs an experienced leader like him to take it on the path of development and prosperity. “We will ensure that the five-time chief minister returns to power after the 2024 assembly elections.”
Chamling, India’s longest serving Chief Minister, was the Chief Minister of Sikkim between 1994 and 2019. He lost in 2019 to incumbent Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang’s Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM). SKM won 17 of the 32 seats, the remaining 15 were won by the SDF. However, all SDF MLAs except Chamling later joined SKM or Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Bhutia in his address accused Tamang of mismanagement, bad governance and corruption. “The Tamang government has taken a loan of Rs 20,000 crore in the last four-and-a-half years, but no one knows where all this money has gone,” he alleged. Before forming the Hamro Sikkim Party, Bhutia contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. From Darjeeling. And he contested the 2016 assembly elections from Siliguri in West Bengal on a Trinamool Congress ticket, but lost both times. The Hamro Sikkim Party also lacked voter support, polling less than two percent of the vote and forfeiting the deposits of all its candidates in the 2019 assembly elections.
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