NC vote share dips, PDP, BJP gain ground

National Conference (NC), which looks certain to lay to form the next government has polled three percentage points less than it had secured in 2002 when it had to was in the opposition, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Dec 29, 2008, 24:29:19 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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National Conference (NC), which looks certain to lay to form the next government has polled three percentage points less than it had secured in 2002 when it had to was in the opposition. The Congress has also lost its vote share. The real gainers are the People’s Democratic Party PDP and the BJP.

Poll toll

National conference has secured 25 per cent of the votes polled as compared to 28 per cent it got in 2002.

The BJP has received a nine percent boost in vote share in the Jammu region.

The Congress went down from 24.5 per cent in 2002 to barely 20 per cent this time, with huge losses in the Kashmir Valley.

Farooq Abdullah-led National Conference secured 25 per cent of the votes polled as compared to 28 per cent it got in 2002, according to the Election Commission website. In Kashmir, its vote share increased marginally while in Jammu it dipped, resulting in its over-all dip. The Congress, which got 24.5 per cent votes in 2002, barely managed to get 20 per cent this time, with huge losses in the Kashmir Valley. The PDP and the BJP that represented the opposite sides of the political divide during the Amarnath Shrine land controversy has gained significant vote shares.

The BJP, which had supported Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti, received a nine percent boost in vote share in the Jammu region that had simmered under a pro-Hindu wave after the agitation, resulting in its victory in 11 of the 17 seats there.

The PDP, that withdrew support to the Congress-led coalition government ostensibly to respect the feelings of Kashmiris —increased its vote share by seven percent, most of it in the Kashmir valley.

PDP had got 9.28 per cent votes in 2002 assembly elections.

In at least 12 seats in the Valley, Congress candidates failed to be among the top five candidates and in six seats, its candidates got less than two per cent of the votes. Even in Jammu valley, the party got lesser votes as compared to last time. But if the Congress still managed to end up with 17 seats its because of the large number of contestants it has fielded.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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