Big win for National Conference in J-K, shrunken Congress rides on its shoulders

Of the 49 seats won by the combine, 42 were won by the NC (the party had won 15 seats in 2014). The Congress got just six seats, compared to 12 in 2014. It got just one seat in Jammu, in its worst-ever performance in the province.

While the BJP did not win a single seat in the Valley, where it contested 19 constituencies, its overall tally rose from 25 in 2014 to 29.

In the NC’s sweep of 35 of 47 seats in the Kashmir province, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was decimated, falling to three constituencies and its lowest tally ever.

The smaller parties and Independents, on which many eyes were trained due to the buzz that they had been propped up by the BJP, too failed to make a mark and could secure only two seats in the Valley. These Independents included candidates put up by the Jamaat-e-Islami and Engineer Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party (AIP).

The biggest challenge for the new government is likely to be how to give representation to the Hindu-dominated mainland Jammu, where the combine won no seat. The eight seats the two parties won in the Jammu province all fall in its hilly areas, including the Congress one and the NC seven.

In the NC-Congress-CPI(M) combined tally of 49, there are only two Hindu faces, both NC candidates. Of the BJP’s 29 seats, 28 are Hindus while one is a Sikh, with none of its Muslim candidates, including two former ministers, winning.

Overall, while the NC contested 40 seats in the Valley and won 35, it fought 16 in Jammu and won seven. The Congress record was six of nine seats in the Valley, and just one of 28 in Jammu, underlining that the NC did the heavy lifting for the alliance. These seats include the five in which the two parties fought in friendly contests, of which the NC won two while the BJP won the other three.

“The people have given their verdict,” NC president Farooq Abdullah said. “They have proved that the steps taken on August 5 (abrogation of Article 370) are not acceptable to the people.”

NC vice-president Omar Abdullah said: “Perhaps, the people bestowed us with more votes than we also expected… In the last five years, efforts were made to decimate us. Lots of parties were created whose sole objective was to decimate us. But, by the grace of God, the parties which came into the field against us, there is no trace of them.”

The PDP’s three-seat tally included two in its bastion of South Kashmir. In the last three elections, the party had won 10, 12 and 11 seats from South Kashmir in 2002, 2008 and 2014 elections, respectively.

PDP president Mehbooba Mufti conceded defeat saying people “voted wisely as they wanted a stable government”.

The election results have put a question mark on the future of smaller political parties and Independent candidates, tagged as the “BJP proxies” by their political opponents. Of the 215 Independent candidates, only two – Sheikh Khurshid, the brother of Engineer Rashid from Langate, and NC rebel Shabir Ahmad Kullay from Shopian – won.

Khurshid, who secured a narrow win, was the only one of the 36 candidates fielded by Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) to win. The Apni Party failed to open its account, with its president Altaf Bukhari too losing. Sajad Lone, the president of the Peoples Conference, could barely retain his Handwara seat, winning by around 700 votes, and lost from Kupwara, where he stood third behind the PDP’s Fayaz Ahmad Mir and the NC’s Nasir Aslam.

The candidates backed by the banned Jamaat-e-Islami too failed. The only one who made a mark was Kulgam candidate Sayar Ahmad Reshi, who stood second behind Communist leader M Y Tarigami.

“We couldn’t motivate our cadre, we failed to build confidence in them,” the Jamaat panel’s chief election in-charge Shameem Ahmad Thoker said. “The ban on our organisation also didn’t help as we couldn’t campaign freely.”