Lok Sabha election results 2019: BJP gets 86 per cent of migrant vote in Kashmir valley
Of the total six Lok Sabha seats of the state, National Conference has swept Kashmir valley by winning or leading in all the three constituencies here while BJP has won the three seats of Jammu and Ladakh divisions.
While Bharatiya Jananta Party (BJP) could not make much gains in Lok Sabha elections in Kashmir but 86 percent of migrant voters of three constituencies of valley have voted for the candidates of the party.
Of the 13,537 migrant votes polled in Anantnag, Baramulla and Srinagar constituencies, 11,648 have preferred BJP candidates.
Of the total six Lok Sabha seats of the state, National Conference has swept Kashmir valley by winning or leading in all the three constituencies here while BJP has won the three seats of Jammu and Ladakh divisions.
In south Kashmir’s militancy infested Anantnag constituency, BJP candidate Sofi Yousuf got 7251 votes out of the 8166 migrant votes polled in the constituency. He polled a total of 10,225 votes out of the total 1.24 lakh votes cast. The numbers are import owing to the boycott effect as just 8.76 electors had cast their votes in the constituency.
The seat was taken over by NC’s new comer in politics Hasnain Masoodi who got 40,180 votes beating Congress state president Ghulam Ahmad Mir and Peoples’ Democratic Party president Mehbooba Mufti.
“Basically migrant votes are mostly Kashmiri Pandits. They have always remained pro-BJP, so that is why most of them cast vote in our favor,” said state spokesperson BJP, Altaf Thakur.
When militancy erupted in Kashmir in 1989, thousands of people most of them Kashmiri Pandits migrated to safer areas including Jammu and other parts of the country. State government figures said that over 1, 54,080 people migrated from Valley in 1990. There are over 99,000 registered migrant voters across the valley and they can vote in special polling stations established for them across the country.
In north Kashmir’s Baramulla constituency, 1813 votes out of 2532 migrant votes have gone in favor of BJP candidate Mohammad Maqbool War besides 575 of these votes went to Peoples’ Conference (PC) candidate Raja Aijaz Ali. War got 7894 total votes out of 4.55 lakh so far counted. NC’s senior leader Mohammad Akbar Lone is leading with more than 1.33 lakh votes so far as against PC’s Raja Aijaz Ali who has got over 1.03 lakh votes.
The central Kashmir’s Srinagar constituency was won comfortably by NC patron and President Farooq Abdullah who got more than 1.06 lakh votes out of over 1.86 lakhs. However he managed to get just 140 migrant votes out of 2839 polled; much of the number amounting to 2584 has gone in favor of BJP’s Khalid Jehangir. Jehangir managed just a total of 4631 votes.
The overall vote share of BJP in Anantnag is 8.19 percent, 2.48 percent in Srinagar and 1.73 percent in Baramulla.
“Though there was Modi wave across country but 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 more on Assembly polls. “The participation in Lok sabha poll was an exercise keeping in mind assembly elections and going into the figures of these polls we will be fighting next elections with maximum strength,” he said.