• Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) supremo Prem Singh Tamang took oath as the Chief Minister of Sikkim on June 10 for the second consecutive term.

• The 56-year-old politician was administered the oath of office and secrecy by Governor Lakshman Prasad Acharya at a function held in Paljor Stadium in Gangtok.

• Eleven other ministers also took oath along with him.

• The council of ministers in Sikkim can have a maximum strength of 12 including the Chief Minister.

• Tamang, 56, spearheaded the SKM’s landslide victory in the Assembly polls and the lone Lok Sabha seat in Sikkim. 

• The SKM won 31 of the 32 Assembly seats in the polls, which took place simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections. Tamang won from both Rhenock and Soreng-Chakung constituencies that he contested.

• The opposition Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), which ruled the state for 25 years in a row till 2019, managed to win only one seat.

Who is Prem Singh Tamang?

• Tamang, regarded as an able organiser, administrator and fiery politician, rode on a slew of development and welfare measures, besides his own personal charisma, to massively increase his party's seats and vote share.

• Born to Kalu Singh Tamang and Dhan Maya Tamang on February 5, 1968, Prem Singh Tamang graduated from a college in Darjeeling and became a teacher in a government school in 1990.

• He quit his job and in 1994, co-founded the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), with which he remained associated for nearly 20 years, of which he was a minister for 15 years, before floating his party. 

• Tamang rebelled against the then Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling and subsequently formed his own party, the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM), in 2013.

• The SKM won 10 seats in the 2014 Assembly elections.

• After having fallen out with Chamling, Tamang had ploughed a lonely furrow in Sikkim politics, inviting the wrath of his former mentor as he was booked in a corruption case in which he was convicted to one year imprisonment. Following the conviction, he was disqualified from the state Assembly as an MLA from Upper Burtuk seat.

• After having walked out of prison, where he was lodged for one year after being convicted in a corruption case, in 2017, Tamang revamped his party, which went on to unseat Chamling from power only two years later, winning 17 seats in 2019.

• After winning the 2019 polls, the bar on him to occupy a public post was removed by the central government, following which he took oath as the Chief Minister on May 27, 2019 and won a by-election five months later from Poklok-Kamrang constituency, ironically a seat vacated by Chamling.

• Although SDF had won 15 seats, two party MLAs had won two seats each and had to quit one seat each, effectively putting the party’s strength at 13 in the Assembly. Chamling suffered mass desertions of his MLAs, as 10 legislators joined the BJP, while the remaining two switched sides to the SKM, leaving him as the lone representative of his party in the Assembly.

• Tamang went on to further consolidate his power and expand his party base and support, focusing on welfare schemes targeted at women and weaker sections and implementing development work. 

• He stitched an alliance with the BJP. The coalition, however, collapsed ahead of the 2024 Assembly polls over the seat-sharing issue.

• Tamang won from Rhenock and Soreng-Chakung constituencies by thumping margins, while Chamling lost in both seats — Namcheybung and Poklok-Kamrang.

• Chamling still holds the record of being the longest serving CM in the country. He was the CM of Sikkim from December 12, 1994 till May 27, 2019 — more than 24 years.

• The defeat may mark the end of Chamling’s four-decade-long public life to leave Tamang as the new satrap of Sikkim.

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