Srinagar: The Rajya Sabha election in Jammu and Kashmir triggered a political storm on Friday after the Bhartiya Janta Party – defying electoral arithmetic – won one seat while the INDIA bloc bagged the remaining three seats.

The saffron party secured a Rajya Sabha berth for its J&K president Sat Sharma who defeated the National Conference (NC) spokesperson Imran Nabi Dar with the support of four non-BJP legislators.

Dar lost the contest on the fourth seat to Sharma who managed to win 32 votes, even though the saffron party has only 28 legislators in the house. It was not immediately known which legislators from the non-BJP camp voted for Sharma.

'Who were the MLAs?'

The ruling party had a combined support of 52 members which includes its own 41 legislators, six from Congress, three from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), one from Communist Party of India (Marxist) and one from the Awami Ittehad Party.

Besides, there are six independent legislators in the House.

The Peoples Conference president Sajad Lone termed the contest as a “fixed match” between the NC and the BJP.

However, chief minister Omar Abdullah claimed that all the NC legislators voted as per the party’s directions and the saffron party won the fourth seat as four legislators who had promised support to the NC candidates “deliberately invalidated” their votes.

“Who were the MLAs who deliberately invalidated their votes by marking a wrong preference number while voting? Do they have the guts to put their hands up and own up to helping the BJP after promising us their votes? What pressure or inducement helped them make this choice? Let’s see if any of the BJP’s secret team own up to selling their souls!” Abdullah posted on X.

The voting for Rajya Sabha election is not a secret exercise unlike the Lok Sabha polls but independent legislators are not obliged to show their marked ballots to the polling agents.

Under rules, the punishment of disqualification from the house doesn’t apply to legislators who don’t follow the party’s whip in the Rajya Sabha election.

'Axis of the evil'

The significant election which was held for the first time in J&K in more than a decade concluded at 4 pm on Friday in the legislative assembly complex in Srinagar.

According to officials, 86 out of 88 legislators cast their votes with Peoples Conference president abstaining while the vote of Aam Aadmi Party’s incarcerated J&K chief Mehraj-ud-Din Malik was received through postal ballot.

After the result was declared, PC president Lone claimed that the ruling party polled three extra votes for its third candidate and the party treasurer Gurwinder Singh Oberoi who was declared winner on the third seat.

“As predicted fixed match. Axis of the evil. NC and BJP. Thank God I abstained. Imagine what my plight would have been. Now mathematically proved. That it was a fixed match. Why did NC poll extra votes for candidate 3. They didn’t need to. They polled 31 votes for candidate 3. Only 29 votes would have sufficed. Even 28. Because BJP was fighting for seat 4. Who cross voted. Whose votes were rejected. And who was hand in glove,” Lone posted on X.

Even though the Rajya Sabha election had brought the INDIA bloc partners into a tight embrace with the Congress as well as the opposition PDP extending support to the NC, the allegations of cross-voting and rejected votes are likely to sour the festive mood in the ruling party.

Chief minister Abdullah who is also the NC working president was among the first to cast their votes on Friday morning at the three booths that were set up in the legislative assembly complex for voting.

The NC’s former ministers and prominent faces of the party in north Kashmir and Chenab region Chaudhary Mohammad Ramzan and Sajad Kichloo were declared winners on the first two seats after defeating the BJP’s Ali Mohammed Mir and Rakesh Mahajan.

Congress's fortunes

For the first time in J&K’s electoral history, the Congress didn’t field any candidate in the Rajya Sabha contest after the NC refused to part with the first two “safe” seats while offering the fourth “unsafe” seat to the national party.

Two seats are currently vacant in J&K assembly which has 90 members.

The Nagrota assembly constituency fell vacant following the demise of senior BJP leader and MLA Devender Singh Rana while Budgam is without a lawmaker after the chief minister vacated the constituency while retaining his second seat Ganderbal.

Earlier, chief minister Abdullah had exuded confidence about winning all the four seats.

“This election will reveal who supports the BJP and who is its opponent. Not a single party has supported the BJP over the last one year and on its own it cannot win even one seat,” Abdullah told reporters last week.

The saffron party had fielded its J&K president, Rakesh Mahajan and Dr Ali Mohammad Mir and it required non-BJP votes to win one of the four seats.

Ahead of the voting on Friday, the leader of opposition in J&K assembly Sunil Sharma took potshots at the Congress for letting down its J&K leaders by supporting the ruling NC in the election.

“Congress has been following Dr Farooq Abdullah. There is no value in (J&K Congress president) Tariq Karra’s letters to the Congress high command as the leadership value words of the Sheikh family,” he said.

Since the last Rajya Sabha election in 2015, J&K went through momentous changes including the reading down of Article 370 which left the erstwhile state without a representative in the Upper House of the parliament while the assembly elections was also delayed.

This report, first published at 3.17 pm on October 24, 2025, was republished at 8.50 pm on the same day with the poll results.

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