If the rout that the ruling Congress-National Conference alliance faced in Jammu and Kashmir in the parliamentary polls is any indication, the Assembly elections due later this year could be worse for the coalition partners.
It was for the first time that the NC’s flamboyant president and Union minister Farooq Abdullah lost any election in Kashmir and that too in the party’s bastion, Srinagar.
It was the first defeat of the scion of the powerful Abdullah family that has been mostly ruling the state for decades as opposition Peoples Democratic Party candidate Tariq Hameed Karra trounced him by 42,183 votes.
Out of 15 Assembly segments in Srinagar-Budgam constituency, the NC could maintain lead in only three segments while PDP took lead in the rest.
NC candidates
NC’s two other candidates and sitting MPs Sharif-ud-Din Shariq and Mehboob Beg lost from north and south Kashmir constituencies by a margin of 29,219 and 65,417 votes respectively.
In south Kashmir’s Anantnag constituency, from where PDP president Mehbooba Mufti won, the party took lead in all 16 Assembly segments, leaving the ruling party shocked.
The situation in north Kashmir’s Baramulla seat, where senior Peoples Democratic Party leader and former deputy chief minister Muzaffar Hussain Beig won, was no different with the party taking lead in 11 out of 16 Assembly segments.
This was the first time since the PDP was formed in 1999 that the party managed to bag all the three parliamentary seats in the valley. The vote share of the National Conference also declined in comparison to 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
According to tentative figures, NC polled only 11.1 per cent of the total votes cast in the state. This is approximately eight per cent decline than the 19.11 per cent it got in 2009.PDP won all the three seats of Kashmir by a wide margin, secured 20.5 per cent votes.
The vote percentage of Congress, which got a drubbing on Jammu, Udhampur and Ladakh seats at the hands of BJP, has marginally declined. From a vote share of 24.67 per cent in 2009, the party polled 22.9 per cent in state this time.