SRINAGAR/JAMMU: The National Conference (NC)-Congress alliance is headed to form the government in Jammu and Kashmir after getting a clear majority in a 90-member house on Tuesday, October 8, 2024.
Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly elections are being conducted after ten years, and this is the first assembly elections after Ladakh was hived off from Jammu and Kashmir, and both regions were demoted into two Union Territories.
There are some key takeaways even as Jammu and Kashmir’s poll results throw up a decisive verdict.
The NC-Congress alliance was ahead in 49 of the 90 seats. Of these 49 seats, the larger share went to NC which won 42 seats, six to Congress, and the lone seat to the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The BJP led in 29 seats, independents in seven, and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in three. The Peoples Conference and Aam Admi Party bagged one seat each.
Decisive Victory for NC-Cong in Valley
The mandate reflects the clear mood in the Valley which has given a decisive victory to the NC-Congress alliance, laying to rest all speculations of a fractured verdict.
NC has given its best performance since 1996 while the other main regional party, PDP, has delivered its worst ever show.
The NC alone has won 35 seats out of a total of 47 seats in Kashmir valley while Congress got five and CPI-M one. PDP has three seats, and People’s Conference one.
Clearly, the Engineer Rashid (Awami Ittehad Party) and Jamaat-e-Islami factor has had little impact on the results. The independents floated by the two groups, in alliance with each other, failed to garner votes and could register only two victories – one each in Langate and Shopian.
The People’s Democratic Party, which formed a coalition government in 2015 with BJP has been decimated in Kashmir valley where it went down from 28 to three seats.
BJP Excels in Jammu
Out of 43 seats, BJP has bagged 29, most of them in the Hindu majority districts.
While this signals four gains for the BJP, it cannot be conceived as an improvement of its tally. The increase of four seats needs to take into account the reshaped electoral map of Jammu and Kashmir. The delimitation commission not only gave six extra seats to Jammu province, as compared to one for Kashmir, it also carved out more Hindu majority constituencies, giving BJP a slight edge.
The BJP won 25 out of 37 seats in 2014. It has won 29 out of 43 seats. The percentage of seats by and large remains the same at about 67.5%.
Chenab Valley & Pir Panjal
Of the 29 seats won by the BJP, three are in the Chenab Valley – Bhaderwah, Doda West, and Kishtwar. While the division of votes between the National Conference and Congress in Bhaderwah, where the alliance did not work, aided the BJP, in Kishtwar it played the terrorism victim card by fielding the daughter (Shagun Parihar) of the party’s slain leader. The victory margin is slender.
The party has also witnessed reduced victory margins in several other constituencies but gained in some.
The biggest setback to the BJP was witnessed in the Pir Panjal belt of Rajouri-Poonch, where it has won only one out of eight seats – Kalakote-Sunderbani. The redistricting of this constituency by clubbing areas from two constituencies appears to have aided BJP’s victory here.
However, in the rest of Pir Panjal – Nowshera, Rajouri, Darhal, Thannamandi, Poonch-Haveli, Mendhar, and Surankot – where the BJP sought to weaponize the grant of ST status to Paharis to garner votes, the BJP’s machinations have not worked.
BJP has retained its grip on the Hindu majority districts. However, in many urban areas, its reduced vote share signals the increasing resentment against the BJP in the party’s main stronghold.
Congress’s Dismal Performance
The bigger loser in Jammu, however, is the Congress with its dismal performance. Despite the deepening disappointments of the voters and their disenchantment with BJP’s policies, the Congress was unable to leverage the anti-incumbency factor.
The overall Congress performance in Jammu and Kashmir is disappointing. It is down from 9 seats in 2014 to 6 seats in 2019. In the 2014 legislative assembly elections, the Congress bagged 12 seats, three of them in the Ladakh region which is now carved out as a separate Union Territory with no legislative assembly.
The Congress has bagged five seats in Kashmir Valley and one in Pir Panjal – Rajouri.
While Congress has lost miserably in the Jammu region, the NC has regained some ground in Pir Panjal and Chenab Valley. So have the independents – most of them rebel candidates from the National Conference or the Congress.
A spectacular victory has been that of Mehraj Malik of the Aam Admi Party in Doda. He was pitted against many heavyweights like Khalid Najeeb Suhrawardy (NC), Abdul Majid Wani (DPAP), and BJP’s Gajay Singh Rana. His aggressive campaign pivoted to issues of accountability, and his clean image is said to have enticed the youth.
BJP non-existent in Kashmir
The BJP’s complete rout in the Valley highlights the false narrative of development, peace, and progress.
However, one cannot lose sight of the fact that the BJP has registered and improved its presence in some constituencies where it has finished in second place or secured more than 1,000 votes. Notable is its performance in Gurez, where its candidate Faqeer Mohd. Khan bagged 7246 votes as against National Conference’s Nazir Ahmed Khan who secured 8378 votes.
The BJP also finished second in Habbakadal but lost with a huge margin.
Have you liked the news article?