GUWAHATI: The ‘missing’ O Tinu Longkumer in Nagaland withdrew his nomination on Thursday.
He had filed his nomination as the National People’s Party (NPP) candidate for by-election to Aonglenden Assembly constituency in Nagaland’s Mokokchung district.
Official sources said Longkumer withdrew his nomination by sending his proposer along with a written authorization.
The NPP’s Nagaland unit president Ato Yepthomi said Longkumer remained incommunicado.
“If he wanted to withdraw from the polls, he could have done it by keeping all of us in the party in the loop. Why did he have to do it clandestinely? He is not a kid that we will tie him up,” Yepthomi told this newspaper.
The NPP had filed an FIR with the police on Wednesday saying that Longkumer had been “missing” since March 26 and he might be abducted. However, the police said he was safe and healthy and had not been abducted by any.
Longkumer was rumoured to have been offered the post of chairman of the state’s excise department by Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), which is a major constituent of the state’s ruling coalition.
The by-election was necessitated as Longkumer’s brother, Imtikumzuk Longkumer, who was the sitting NDPP MLA, died last year.