Jammu: Assembly elections have been completed in Jammu and Kashmir. The National Conference-Congress alliance won the assembly elections held after 10 years. The NC-Congress alliance has got the majority and now efforts will be made to form the government. Meanwhile, the question is how many Hindu MLAs have become in Jammu and Kashmir. If we talk about total numbers, only 30 Hindu candidates have become MLAs in Jammu and Kashmir. The National Conference (NC) and Congress alliance has crossed the majority mark by winning 48 seats and now they are going to form the next government in Jammu and Kashmir. In this election, only two Hindu faces have won on NC ticket.
Actually, Congress and NC together had fielded a total of 30 candidates from Hindu and Sikh communities. But could win only two seats. At the same time, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which won 29 seats in Jammu and Kashmir, has 28 Hindu and one Sikh members. No Muslim candidate, including two former ministers, could succeed in winning on the party ticket.
National Conference’s Surinder Choudhary defeated BJP’s Jammu and Kashmir unit chief Ravindra Raina from Nowshera constituency in Rajouri district by a margin of 7,819 votes. Former Legislative Councilor Chaudhary got 35,069 votes as against Raina’s 27,250 votes. Ravindra Raina had won the Nowshera seat in the 2014 assembly elections by defeating Chaudhary, who contested on the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) ticket, by a margin of more than 10,000 votes.
However, Surinder Chaudhary resigned from PDP and joined BJP in 2022 and then joined National Conference in July last year. Arjun Singh Raju is the second Hindu face to win the election on National Conference ticket from Ramban assembly constituency. Raju got 28,425 votes while independent candidate Suraj Singh Parihar got 19,412 votes. BJP candidate Rakesh Singh Thakur stood third by getting 17,511 votes. Parihar had rebelled against the BJP and contested the elections as an independent candidate.
The National Conference had fielded nine Hindu candidates, including one woman, but only two of them could win. On the other hand, Congress had fielded 19 Hindu and two Sikh candidates, most of whom were from Jammu region, but none of them managed to win and most of the candidates finished second. None of the BJP’s 25 Muslim candidates were successful in winning the elections and most of them, especially in the Kashmir Valley, had their deposits forfeited. BJP had fielded a total of 62 candidates, but only 28 Hindu and one Sikh candidate could win in Jammu region. (from input language)
Tags: jammu and kashmir, jammu kashmir
FIRST PUBLISHED: October 9, 2024, 08:03 IST