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With the Election Commission’s (EC) announcement on Friday, Jammu and Kashmir is set to hold its first Assembly elections in a decade and elect a government after more than six years under Central rule. Voting will be held across three phases, making it the shortest Assembly poll in J&K in over two decades. Polls were held over four phases in 2002, seven in 2008 and five in 2014.
The last Assembly elections in J&K were held in 2014, but the government was dissolved after the BJP withdrew its support to former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2018.
In December last year, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Centre’s decision in 2019 to abrogate Article 370 and revoke J&K’s special status, and directed the Union government to hold Assembly elections by September 30, 2024.
Since the last Assembly polls, the constituencies in J&K have been redrawn. In 2022, a delimitation commission added seven Assembly seats to the Union territory, taking the total up from 83 to 90. There are now 43 seats in Jammu and 47 in Kashmir, with nine seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes. Six of the seven new seats went to Jammu, the Hindu-dominated region of the erstwhile state.
The award of seats based on the 2011 Census also meant that Jammu, with 44% of the population, will get a 48% share in seats, while Kashmir, with 56% of the population, will get a 52% share in seats. Earlier, the Kashmir-Jammu split was 55%-45%.
From the first Assembly polls in J&K in 1951 until 2002, the National Conference (NC) and Congress were the dominant parties in J&K, forming all but one state government. In 2002, for the first time, the PDP came to power in alliance with the Congress, as part of which each was to hold the CM’s post for three years each (J&K used to have a six-year government under Article 370).
However, the tenures of state governments remained interrupted throughout, with J&K having seen imposition of Central rule on nine separate occasions since 1951, for a total duration of 13 years and 9 months, owing to recurring spells of militant and separatist activity, and unstable law and order situations.
The NC won the 2008 Assembly elections, getting 28 seats from a 23.07% vote share, and formed a coalition government with the Congress, which won 17 seats and 17.71% of the vote, in the then 87-member House that also included Ladakh.
The PDP emerged as the second-largest party, with 21 seats from a 15.39% vote share, while the BJP won 11 seats from a 12.45% vote share. The remaining 10 seats were won by minor parties and Independents.
In the 2014 Assembly polls, which was also a four-way contest, the PDP emerged as the single-largest party with 28 seats (all in Kashmir) from a vote share of 23.85%. The BJP finished as the runner-up with 25 seats (all in Jammu) from a 26.23% vote share. Though both parties were poles apart ideologically, the PDP led by Mufti Mohd Sayeed decided to tie up with the BJP, with one thinking being that a government led by the two parties would be representative of both Jammu and Kashmir, and hence bridge the gap between the two sides.
The NC and the Congress, which had been allies until the elections, contested separately and won 15 and 12 seats, respectively. While the NC secured 21.14% of the vote share, the Congress managed 18.36%. Other parties, including the CPI(M) and Sajad Lone-led People’s Conference (PC), and Independents won the remaining seven seats.
In June 2018, in the wake of growing differences between the BJP and PDP, the BJP withdrew support to the Mehbooba Mufti-led government. J&K was put under Governor’s rule, followed by President’s rule.
2024 LS polls: NC ahead of BJP, but BJP more in vote share
The first major election after the fall of the government in J&K was held earlier this year with the Lok Sabha polls. The BJP chose not to contest the three Valley seats, putting up candidates only in the two Jammu constituencies.
The performance of the parties extrapolated to the Assembly segments show the NC emerging as the single largest party and, with support from INDIA bloc allies Congress and PDP, winning just enough seats to form a coalition government.
In the Lok Sabha elections, the NC led in 34 Assembly segments, followed by the BJP in 29. The Congress was the leading party in seven Assembly seats, the PDP in five, and the People’s Conference in one. The INDIA bloc, which comprises the Congress, NC and PDP (though the latter two are bitter allies at the local level), could potentially win 46 Assembly seats, one more than the 45-seat majority mark.
The vote shares stood at 24.36% for the BJP, 22.3% for the NC, 19.38% for the Congress, and 8.48% for the PDP.
The Lok Sabha polls in J&K’s five seats saw the BJP and NC each win two seats each, with one seat going to an Independent, Sheikh Abdul Rashid popularly known as Engineer Rashid, who is jailed under UAPA.
However, what needs to be kept in mind is that the BJP contested only the Jammu and Udhampur Lok Sabha seats in the Jammu province, and will likely contest in the Valley in the Assembly polls. While the NC, as a Congress ally, contested all the three Valley seats, leaving the Jammu constituencies to the Congress, the PDP contested just the Anantnag-Rajouri and Srinagar Lok Sabha seats after failing to reach a seat-sharing agreement with the NC.
In a similar Assembly segment-level breakdown of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the NC and BJP were again the frontrunners, at 30 segments each, followed by the Congress at 16, the PDP at four, and the People’s Conference at two. The Independents led in five segments.
