Srinagar: Even though the BJP appears set to sit on the opposition benches in Jammu and Kashmir’s legislature, the party could draw solace from the fact that its legislative strength as well as vote share have gone up from 25 seats and 22.98% in the 2014 assembly elections to 29 seats and 25.64% in the Union territory this election.
According to Election Commission data, the saffron party’s vote share in the 2014 assembly election in J&K, which propelled it to power in an alliance with the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), was also an improvement of 10.55 percentage points from the party’s vote share in the 2008 assembly election.
The data suggests that the BJP has been steadying its ship in the Union territory by maintaining its hold on Jammu, the Hindu heartland of J&K.
Here it has eaten into the vote banks of the traditional parties including the National Conference (NC) and the Congress over the years, with the latter party being wiped from the region in this election.
Even though the final voting percentage of each of the 90 constituencies that went to polls in this assembly election could not be immediately collated, the BJP seems to be on an upward trajectory in the Kashmir valley as well, where some of its candidates won votes amounting to more than 20% of those won by the winning candidates.
In south Kashmir’s Shopian constituency, BJP candidate Javid Ahmad Qadri polled 6,895 votes against the 14,113 votes for independent candidate and winner Shabir Ahmad Kullay, while Roshan Hussain Khan Gojar, who was in the fray from the Kokernag constituency, polled 4,173 votes against the NC’s Zafar Ali Khatana, who won after registering 17,949 votes.
Syed Peerzada Wajahat Hussain, who was in the fray on a saffron party ticket from the Anantnag constituency, got 1,508 votes against the Congress’s Peerzada Mohammad Sayeed, who polled 6,679 votes.
Arsheed Ahmad Bhat, who fought from the Rajpora constituency in Pulwama district, got 5,584 votes against the NC’s Ghulam Mohiuddin Mir, who polled 25,627 votes.
In Srinagar district’s Lal Chowk constituency, one of the BJP’s top Kashmir faces, Aijaz Hussain Rather, recorded 3,281 votes against the NC’s Ahsan Pardesi, who polled 16,731 votes, while in Habba Kadal constituency, Ashok Kumar Bhat, the party’s candidate and a Kashmiri Pandit, came second with 2,899 votes after the NC’s Shamima Firdous, who polled 12,437 votes.
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The party staged a tough fight in north Kashmir, where its candidate for the Gurez constituency, Faqeer Mohammad Khan, lost to the NC’s Nazir Ahmad Khan by a margin of mere 1,132 votes, while in Karnah, the BJP candidate Mohammad Idrees, who got 2,973 votes, lost to the NC’s Javaid A. Mirchal, who polled 14,294 votes.
The BJP however failed yet again to win any seats in the Kashmir valley, while in the Jammu region, the party managed to win some seats with a thin margin.
EC data shows that the BJP’s Shagun Parihar defeated the NC’s Sajad A. Kichloo with a margin of 521 votes in the Kishtwar constituency in the Chenab valley, while senior Congress leader Raman S. Bhalla was defeated by the saffron party’s Narinder Singh Raina by a margin of 1,966 votes from R.S. Pura-Jammu (South).
Of the 29 seats that the saffron party has won in this assembly election in the Jammu division, four seats recorded margins of less than 2,000 votes.
According to EC data, the Farooq Abdullah-led NC, which has emerged as the single largest party in J&K with 42 seats, expanded its vote share from 20.77% to 23.43%, which has also handed it 27 more seats than its 2014 assembly election tally of 15 seats.
On the other hand, the Congress’s prospects seem to be dimming in J&K, with the party’s vote share shrinking significantly from 18.01% in the 2014 assembly polls to 11.97%, which has also halved its seats from 12 in 2014 to six in this assembly election.
The Congress’s vote share had increased fractionally by 0.29 percentage points from the assembly election in 2008 to the one held in 2014 but it had translated into the loss of five seats for the party.
The biggest loser of this election seems to be Mehbooba Mufti’s PDP, which has seen its vote share shrink drastically from 22.67% in the 2014 polls – when the party won 28 seats and went on form a coalition government in J&K with the help of the saffron party, despite stiff opposition – to 8.87%.
Political analysts argue that the downfall of the PDP was the result of its coalition with the BJP in 2014, which is widely believed to have paved the way for the saffron party to change J&K’s social and political demographics and its constitutional relationship with the Union of India post the abrogation of Article 370.
