Ahead of Lok Sabha Polls and State Assembly Elections in Arunachal Pradesh, Former BJP Leader and Ex-Chief Minister Gegong Apang joined Janta Dal (Secular) headed by former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda.
The formal joining of Gegong Apang was held at Pasighat, the headquarters of East Siang district on Wednesday, in the presence of HD Deve Gowda, sources close to the former chief minister informed. The decision to this effect was taken during a meeting held at Pasighat, he said.
After joining the party, Apang while talking to reporters said, “The JD (S) has a secular outlook and therefore we have decided now we will be together”.
Gegong Apang had last month in January quit Bhartiya Janta Party. In his resignation Letter, he appealed to Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to remember the teachings of Atal Bihari Vajpayee about ‘Raj Dharma’. “The decision to put Shri Pema Khandu’s name as CM before the election is neither the norm or the tradition that a cadre-based party like the BJP had followed,” he wrote in the letter to Amit Shah.
He also alleged that Saffron Party of retorting to ‘Dirty Tricks’ to gain power in 2014 after Arunachal Pradesh last state Polls. Gegong Apang had in 2014, ahead of Assembly Polls of Arunachal Pradesh, joined the Bhartiya Janta Party. He had unsuccessfully contested the State Polls 2014 and lost to Alo Libang who later joined the BJP and inducted as a cabinet minister in Pema Khandu government.
In December 2016, Arunachal Pradesh became the first state in the northeast to have a full-fledged BJP government when Khandu and 33 other MLAs of the People’s Party of Arunachal (PPA) joined the saffron party.
Gegong Apang has been seven times MLA. He was also seen at Mamata Banerjee‘s Mega Opposition Show in West Bengal on January 19 sharing a stage with other Opposition Parties.
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