Mixed fortunes for Congress, BJP state chiefs in J&K Assembly polls

 It was mixed fortunes for the J&K unit chiefs of the Congress and the BJP in the Assembly elections as results came out on Tuesday.

While Congress chief Tariq Hameed Karra secured 18,933 votes to win the Central Shalateng seat in the Srinagar district by a huge margin of 14,395 votes, defeating his nearest Independent rival, Muhammad Irfan Shah, who got only 4,538 votes, his BJP counterpart Ravinder Raina was not that lucky.

Raina lost to Surinder Kumar Choudhary of the National Conference in the Nowshera seat of the Rajouri district by a margin of 7,819 votes. While the BJP chief, who was the sitting MLA, secured 27,250 votes, the NC candidate got 35,069. Manohar Singh of the Bahujan Samaj Party was third with 1,456 votes, while Haq Nawaz of the Peoples Democratic Party got only 425 votes.

Meanwhile, Karra's predecessors as Congress chiefs of J&K also had mixed results.

His immediate predecessor Vikar Rasool Wani, who held the post from August 2022 to August 2024 and was the sitting MLA, badly lost the Banihal seat - one of the five where the Congress and the National Conference decided to have a 'friendly fight' - in Ramban district to the NC's Sajad Shaheen.

Shaheen secured 33,128 votes to defeat his nearest rival Imtiaz Ahmed Shan, of the PDP, who got 2,7018 votes, by a margin of 6,110, but Wani was in third place with 20,458. BJP's Mohd Saleem Bhat came fourth with 6,285 votes.

Other former Presidents of the Congress in J&K were luckier.

Ghulam Ahmad Mir, who headed the Congress from 2015 to 2022, won the Dooru seat in the Anantnag district by a margin of 29,728 votes. While he secured 44,270 votes, his PDP rival Mohammad Ashrag Malik only managed 14,542, and Mohamad Saleen Paray of the Democratic Progressive Azad Party was a distant third with 2,877 votes, just marginally above the 2,662 NOTA votes.

The Congress wrested the seat from the PDP.

Peerzada Mohammed Sayeed, who was at the helm from 2004 to 2008, won the Anantnag seat by a margin of 1,686 votes. He secured 6,679 votes against 4,993 of PDP's Mehboob Beg and 4,245 of J&K Apni Party's Hilal Ahmed Sheikh.

The Congress has also wrested this seat from the PDP, whose chief Mehbooba Mufti had won it in 2014. Before her, it was represented by her father, party founder, and former Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

However, former Chief Minister and Union Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, who headed the party from 2002 to 2004 but left the Congress in August 2022 to launch his own Democratic Progressive Azad Party, saw it washed out in the polls.

(With inputs from IANS)