BJP, Allies Suffer Setback in J&K but Are Happy over Defeat of Bete Noires Omar Abdullah & Mehbooba Mufti
Srinagar: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has retained Jammu and Udhampur Lok Sabha seats but lost the lone Ladakh seat which it had won in 2014 and 2019 to an independent. This with the crushing defeat to its allies on all the three seats of the predominantly Muslim Kashmir Valley and the Pir Panjal tribal belt in the Jammu region is seen by the local watchers as a setback to the saffron party.
However, the news of the defeat of its key bete noires Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti was received by the leaders of the BJP and their allies here and also in Jammu as a promise of happiness and satisfaction. The BJP leaders and workers at the party headquarters here got into celebration mode with the pouring in of the reports of Mr. Abdullah and Ms. Mufti trailing in the Baramulla and Anantnag-Rajouri constituencies, respectively.
During the election campaigning, the BJP leadership be it Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Home Minister Amit Shah or party’s J&K unit chief Ravinder Raina-all had identified Mr. Abdullah and Ms. Mufti as ‘symbols of dynastic politics’ and urged the voters to defeat them in the elections to put an end to their “political fiefdom” which they insisted had only “brought only misery to the people of J&K” in the past.
However, amid the gloom over the defeat of their leaders, the National Conference (NC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and also the opposition parties in Ladakh welcomed the overall results as ‘people’s referendum’ against the Centre’s “undemocratic, unconstitutional and illegal” decisions taken on August 5, 2019 and the BJP government’s “ani-people” policies vis-à-vis the twin Union territories.
Both the NC and the PDP and also the Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA) had during the electioneering insisted that these elections were being fought not for bijli, pani and sadak but against the Centre’s stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its special status envisaged in Articles 370 and 35A and splitting up it into two UTs.
The Srinagar, Anantnag-Rajouri and Ladakh seats are likely to go into the I.N.D.I.A. bloc kitty. It is, however, not clear whether the J&K Awami Ittehad Party’s incarcerated leader Abdur Rashid Sheikh who has won from Baramulla will go with the NDA or I.N.D.I.A. or prefer to remain non-aligned as he chose as an MLA.
Mr. Sheikh who is popularly known as Engineer Rashid defeated his nearest rival Mr. Abdullah with a margin of over two lakh votes. People’s Conference chairman Sajad Gani Lone whose candidature was wholeheartedly supported by the BJP and its ally J&K Apni Party finished third.
Abrar Rashid, a son of Eng. Rashid after offering Salat al-Shukr, an Islamic prayer performed to thank and express gratitude to God, told reporters, “We dedicate this victory to the people of Kashmir, not just Baramulla. They have always been the source of inspiration to our father”. Eng. Rashid has been lodged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail since his arrest by National Investigation Agency (NIA) in an alleged money laundering and terror funding case in 2019 and it was Abrar and his brother Asrar Rashid who led the election campaign for their father.
As Eng. Rashid was set to win, Mr. Abdullah wrote on microblogging site ‘X’, “I think it’s time to accept the inevitable. Congratulations to Engineer Rashid for his victory in North Kashmir. I don’t believe his victory will hasten his release from prison nor will the people of North Kashmir get the representation they have a right to, but the voters have spoken and in a democracy that’s all that matters.”
Ms. Mufti who has been defeated by NC’s Mian Altaf Ahmed by a huge margin of votes said in a post on ‘X, “Respecting the verdict of the people I thank my PDP workers & leaders for their hard work & support despite all the odds. My deepest gratitude to the people who voted for me. Winning & losing is part of the game & won’t deter us from our path. Congratulations to Mian Sahab for his victory.”
On expected lines, PDP’s ‘blue-eye- boy’ Waheed Ur Rehman Parra has lost to NC’s Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi. In Ladakh, NC rebel and Independent candidate Haji Muhammad Haneefa Jan won after defeating his nearest Congress candidate Tsering Namgyal by a margin of 27,862 votes.
Sitting MP Jitendra Singh defeated his nearest rival Chaudhary Lal Singh of the Congress by over 104,300 votes to win Udhampur seat a third time whereas his party colleague Jugal Kishore Sharma retained the Jammu seat by defeating Congress party’s Raman Bhalla by a margin of 131,540 votes.
