The BJP, which could not gain much in the Lok Sabha election in Kashmir, managed to get 86% of votes cast by migrants in the three constituencies of the Valley.
The National Conference has swept the Valley by winning or leading in the three out of the six Lok Sabha seats in Jammu and Kashmir, while the BJP has got the other three. The state sends six members of Parliament from Baramulla, Srinagar, Anantnag, Ladakh, Udhampur and Jammu.
Thousands of people, most of them Kashmiri Pandits, migrated to areas including Jammu and other parts of the country when Kashmir hit by militancy in 1989.
According to state government figures, more than 154,080 people migrated from the Valley in 1990. There are over 99,000 registered migrant voters across the Valley and they can vote in special polling stations, which are set up for them across the country.
Of the 13,537 migrant votes polled in Anantnag, Baramulla and Srinagar constituencies, 11,648 have gone to the candidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
In south Kashmir’s militancy-infested Anantnag, the BJP’s Sofi Yousuf got 7,251 migrant votes out of the 8,166 polled in the constituency. Yousuf received 10,225 votes out of the 124,000 ballots cast. The numbers are important owing to the boycott as just 8.76 electors had cast their votes in the constituency.
The seat was won by Hasnain Masoodi of the NC, who made his electoral debut this year, as he got 40,180 votes beating Congress’ state unit president Ghulam Ahmad Mir and Peoples’ Democratic Party president Mehbooba Mufti.
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“Basically, the migrant voters are mostly Kashmiri Pandits. They have always remained pro-BJP, so that is why most of them cast their votes in our favour,” said state spokesperson BJP Altaf Thakur.
In north Kashmir’s Baramulla constituency, 1,813 migrant votes out of 2,532 have gone in favour of the BJP’s Mohammad Maqbool War and 575 went to Peoples’ Conference (PC) candidate Raja Aijaz Ali. War got 7,894 votes out of 455,550 counted so far. The NC’s senior leader Mohammad Akbar Lone is leading with more than 133,426 votes so far as against PC’s Raja Aijaz Ali, who has got over 103,193 votes.
Central Kashmir’s Srinagar constituency was won comfortably by NC patron and president Farooq Abdullah, who got more than 106,000 votes out of over 186,000. However, he got just 140 migrant votes out of the 2,839 polled as most — 2,584 — went to the BJP’s Khalid Jehangir. Jehangir managed just 4,631 votes.
The overall vote share of the BJP in Anantnag is 8.19%, 2.48% in Srinagar and 1.73% in Baramulla.
“Though there was a Modi wave across the country, here the trend was different. Our vote share in 2014 was zero and compared to that that we have fared well despite the situation and boycott,” Thakur said.
He said that they are targeting to win more in the assembly polls.
“The participation in the Lok Sabha poll was an exercise keeping in mind the assembly elections and going into the figures of these polls we will be fighting next elections with maximum strength,” he said.
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First Published:
May 24, 2019 16:48 IST
Source: HindustanTimes