The ruling Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) has secured a landslide victory in the state assembly elections, capturing 31 out of 32 seats. Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang, the leader of the SKM, triumphed in the Rhenock constituency, defeating his Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF) rival Som Nath Poudyal by a margin of 7,044 votes.During the celebration at the party office in Gangtok, Tamang expressed gratitude to the people of Sikkim and acknowledged the hard work of his party workers. “Pawan Kumar Chamling lost completely in 2019 only but it’s a democracy. The work they couldn’t do in 25 years, we did it in five years. People have voted on that basis,” Tamang stated.
The SDF, meanwhile, managed to secure only one seat in the Shyari constituency. Former Chief Minister and SDF supremo Pawan Kumar Chamling was defeated by SKM nominee Bhoj Raj Rai in the Poklok assembly seat by a margin of 3,063 votes.Chamling, who led Sikkim as its chief minister for nearly 25 years, experienced a dramatic fall from power. His tenure eclipsed the 23-year term of the late Jyoti Basu, the former Chief Minister of West Bengal. Like Basu, whom he idolized, Chamling led his party to five consecutive terms from 1994 to 2019. This was a remarkable achievement for a politician who began his career in Sikkim politics by being elected as the president of the Yangang gram panchayat in 1982.
Chamling’s political journey advanced in 1985 when he won his first assembly election from the Damthang constituency in South Sikkim on a Sikkim Sangram Parishad (SSP) ticket, led by then-Chief Minister Nar Bahadur Bhandari. His career received a further boost in 1989 when he was appointed Industries, Information and Public Relations Minister by Bhandari after being re-elected from Damthang. However, their alliance did not last, as Chamling questioned Bhandari’s leadership style and was subsequently sacked from the SSP in 1992.
