Saffron party wins three seats, NC-Cong alliance gets two, PDP confined to one after losing ‘safe’ seat
As ruling PDP lost “safe” seat to its coalition partner in today’s crucial elections, BJP got Lion’s Share in the biennial elections for the six seat seats of J&K Legislative Council by winning half of the seats.
United opposition comprising- National Conference and Congress- won two seats while PDP- which is single largest party in the Legislative Assembly, with 29 members, confined only to one seat.
Four candidates namely Yasir Reshi (PDP), GL Raina Pardeep Sharma (both BJP) and Aga Syed Mehmood (NC) were declared unopposed on April 3. Today BJP candidate Vikram Randhawa and Congress candidate Thakur Balbir Singh emerged victorious in keenly contested elections. After Monday’s result strength of PDP and BJP has reached to 11 each in the Upper House.
Today PDP’s candidate, Abdul Qayoom Dar lost seat, which was considered as “safe”, due to lack of coordination between two coalition partners which led to tie with BJP. Vikram Randhawa of BJP won the election through lottery.
Congress nominee, Balbir Singh, who was opposition’s candidate, sailed through comfortably by securing highest 31 votes, out of total 89 polled. Lottery was necessitated after PDP and BJP candidates namely Abdul Qayoom Dar and Vikram Randhawa secured 29 votes each. As per agreement between two coalition partners, Abdul Qayoom Dar was allotted “safe” seat while as BJP nominee was nominated on “unsafe” seat. Keeping in view composition of the numbers in the Legislative Assembly, PDP had 30 votes in its kitty including one vote of Sayed Baqir Razvi, Zanskar MLA and BJP had 28 votes including two votes of Peoples Conference (PC) of Sajjad Lone. But at the eleventh hour “annoyed” Razvi decided to vote in favour of BJP instead of PDP, which led to change the equation. Razvi was annoyed with the PDP leadership for betraying people of Zanskar.
Highly placed sources said that on Saturday evening, BJP national president Amit Shah had talked to Razvi from Bhubneshwar and sought his vote for the Legislative Council elections. “As Amit Shah had sought my vote, I voted for coalition candidate”, Razvi told Kashmir Post, while admitting that BJP national president had talked to him.
