New Delhi: In the five fiercely contested seats in J&K, trends show disappointing results for two former chief ministers, PDP’s Mehbooba Mufti and National Conference’s Omar Abdullah. Mufti lost from the Anantnag-Rajouri seat by a margin of 2,81,794 votes, while Abdullah was trumped by independent candidate Engineer Rashid, who won by 2,04,142 votes despite being in Tihar Jail.
The BJP, meanwhile, is maintaining its stronghold in the Jammu region.
Overall, the National Conference has won two seats and Engineer Rashid one in Kashmir, while BJP has secured both seats in the Jammu region.
In the single Ladakh Lok Sabha seat, independent candidate Haneefa Jan, a National Conference rebel from Kargil district, won by 27,862 votes, defeating Congress’s Tsering Namgyal. The incumbent BJP has been pushed to the third position.
The INDIA bloc, which includes the National Conference and Congress, put forward three and two candidates respectively in J&K. The Congress also fielded a candidate in Ladakh as part of the alliance.
The BJP directly contested in the Udhampur and Jammu seats, while backing the Apni Party in Anantnag-Rajouri, although no official alliance was announced. The Apni Party, in return, openly supported the Sajjad Lone-led People’s Conference in Baramulla.
This Lok Sabha election is crucial in J&K and Ladakh for several reasons.
First, it’s the first major election following the abrogation of Article 370. Second, it sets the tone for the assembly election in J&K, to be held by 30 September per an order of the Supreme Court, with NC and BJP looking poised to build on their momentum. And third, this is the first election after the redrawing of boundaries—and the potential reshaping of the political terrain—for Lok Sabha seats in J&K, as outlined in the Delimitation Commission’s 2022 report.
Additionally, the three seats in Kashmir— Baramulla, Srinagar, and Anantnag-Rajouri— saw a record voter turnout.
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BJP’s continuing dominance in Jammu
In the two seats of the Jammu region, the results indicate the BJP’s continued dominance, after 10 years of the Modi government.
In the Udhampur seat, BJP candidate and incumbent MP Jitendra Singh, a Union minister of state in the Prime Minister’s office, defeated Congress’s Choudhary Lal Singh by a margin of 1,24,373 votes. Back in 2019, Jitendra Singh won this seat by a margin of over 3.6 lakh votes.
The Udhampur Lok Sabha seat also includes Doda-Bhaderwah–Kishtwar districts, a belt where former Congressman and ex-CM Ghulam Nabi Azad wields considerable influence. In the debut election of his party, the Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP), candidate GM Saroori, who belongs to this region and is an ex-Congress leader, managed only 39,599 votes.
DPAP’s Saroori was expected to cut into Congress’s vote bank but does not seem to have made much of an impact. The gap between the BJP and Congress candidates is much larger than Saroori’s vote-share.
The last time the Congress clinched the Udhampur seat was when Lal Singh was their candidate in 2009; he had also won it in 2004. After leaving the party in 2014 after he was denied a ticket, he rejoined this March ahead of elections, leading a spirited campaign and leveraging the anti-incumbency sentiment against Jitendra Singh.
While the BJP candidate tried to nationalise the campaign, rallying under PM Modi’s banner, Lal Singh localised it, highlighting issues like land ownership and the incumbent MP’s performance.
However, none of Congress’s top leadership—party president Mallikarjun Kharge or the Gandhis—campaigned in the two Jammu seats. In contrast, the BJP deployed its heavyweights in Jammu, including PM Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
As for the other seat in the region—Jammu—BJP’s two-time incumbent MP Jugal Kishore Sharma won by a margin of 1,35,498 votes against Congress’s Raman Bhalla. This contest, a rematch between Sharma and Bhalla, has been relatively subdued, although the former is facing considerable anti-incumbency after having won his seat in 2019 by over 3 lakh votes.
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Setback for 2 ex-CMs in Kashmir
The elections for the three Kashmir seats not only saw high-octane campaigning but were also seen as a litmus test for various ideologies.
The real surprise has emerged from Baramulla, with former chief minister Omar Abdullah losing to the only independent candidate that has made an impact in Jammu and Kashmir– Engineer Rashid.
While Rashid is currently in Tihar jail, facing charges under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), his sons led a highly charged campaign, drawing large crowds despite lacking formal support from major political parties except Ghulam Nabi Azad’s DPAP.
Abdullah took to X to congratulate rival Rashid.
“I don’t believe his victory will hasten his release from prison nor will the people of North Kashmir get the representation they have a right to but the voters have spoken and in a democracy that’s all that matters,” Abdullah wrote.
Meanwhile, J&K People’s Conference chief Sajad Lone, supported by the Apni Party and several other local leaders, came in third with 1,73,239 votes.
In this contest—the only truly triangular one in J&K—the NC’s cadre seems to have failed to make an impact for Omar Abdullah, with the party not able to live up to its performance in 2019 when it won the seat by 30,000 votes.
In the Anantnag-Rajouri seat, meanwhile, another former CM is facing a rout.
In this constituency, described as having “the potential of redefining the battle of ideologies” by J&K-based political analyst Zafar Choudhary, PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti lost to National Conference’s Mian Altaf Ahmad by 2,81,794 votes. Coming in third, Zafar Iqbal Manhas of the Apni Party, which is backed by the BJP, has managed 1,42,195 votes. It was the party’s first Lok Sabha election after it was formed in 2020.
Following the delimitation in 2022, the Anantnag-Rajouri seat encompassed parts of the twin districts of Rajouri and Poonch from the Jammu region with three districts of South Kashmir—Anantnag, Kulgam, and Shopian. With this change, the tribal communities of Rajouri-Poonch, particularly the Pahari-speaking population and the Gujjar-Bakarwals, were seen as potential kingmakers.
The National Conference’s win seems attributable to factors such as Mian Altaf’s popularity among the Gujjar-Bakarwal community, his status as a religious leader, and support from the Congress, which has a sizable support base in South Kashmir. Additionally, the NC has revitalised its cadres in the region, which will be crucial for upcoming assembly polls.
Like in Anantnag-Rajouri, NC played a religious card in the Srinagar Lok Sabha seat, which it has won 10 out of 12 times since 1967. Party candidate Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, a Shia leader, won by 1,88,416 votes. PDP young gun Waheed Parra has also left a mark, coming in second with 1,68,450 votes, drawing strength from Pulwama district, previously part of the Anantnag constituency but now included in Srinagar. The incumbent MP was Dr Farooq Abdullah, who won the seat with 70,000 votes in 2019.
Overall, the NC’s strategy of dropping all three of its incumbent MPs has yielded mixed results.
While J&K only sends five MPs, the current election results are expected to influence the upcoming assembly polls. The outcomes will likely boost the NC, while raising questions about the future of the PDP. In Jammu, Congress appears to still struggling to revive, but remains the sole challenger to the BJP in the region.
Setback for both NDA and INDIA in Ladakh
In what is being seen as a surprise outcome, Ladakh has got its first MP from Kargil district in 15 years.
While the BJP had won the last two elections with a slim margin, primarily due to votes consolidating in Leh and splitting in Kargil. However, things have changed this time.
The two candidates from Leh—BJP’s Tashi Gyalson and Congress’s Tsering Namgyal—lost out to Haneefa Jan, former Kargil district president. This comes in the wake of Congress-NC units of Kargil rebelling over the candidate being fielded from Leh district.
These elections are crucial for Ladakh, being the first since it became a Union Territory in 2019.
The UT has been in the spotlight as the Buddhist-majority Leh and the Muslim-dominated Kargil have united after a history of acrimony, protesting against the Modi government on four key demands: statehood, constitutional safeguards under the Sixth Schedule, separate Lok Sabha seats for Leh and Kargil districts, and job reservation.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
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