Jammu and Kashmir Election Results 2024: With the National Conference and Congress alliance preparing to form the next government in Jammu and Kashmir after surpassing the majority mark with 48 seats, there are only two Hindu faces who have won the elections on the ticket of the regional party even as the two coalition partners had together fielded 30 candidates, including several members of the Sikh community.
On the other hand, the BJP secured victory in 29 seats, of which 28 are Hindu and one Sikh. Notably, none of its Muslim candidates, including two former ministers, managed to win.
Two Hindu leaders of NC won
National Conference leader Surinder Choudhary emerged victorious by defeating Jammu and Kashmir BJP chief Ravinder Raina by a margin of 7,819 votes in the Nowshera constituency of Rajouri district. Choudhary, a former MLC, received 35,069 votes, while Raina garnered 27,250 votes.
Raina had previously won the Nowshera seat in the 2014 assembly elections, defeating Choudhary, who was then contesting on a PDP ticket, by a margin of over 10,000 votes. However, Choudhary resigned from the PDP in 2022 to join the BJP, only to leave the party after more than a year and rejoin the National Conference in July last year.
Arjun Singh Raju is the second Hindu face to win the election on the National Conference ticket from the Ramban assembly segment. Raju polled 28,425 votes against his nearest rival and BJP rebel candidate Suraj Singh Parihar’s 19,412 votes to register a win by a margin of 9,013 votes. BJP candidate Rakesh Singh Thakur ended third by getting 17,511 votes.
National Conference fielded 9 Hindu candidates
The National Conference had fielded nine Hindu candidates, including a woman, but only two of them managed to win.
The Congress, on the other hand, had fielded 19 Hindu and two Sikh candidates, mostly in the Jammu region, but none of them managed to secure a win and mostly ended as runners-up in the hustling.
Meanwhile, none of the BJP's 25 Muslim candidates, including two former ministers, managed to win the elections with most of them losing their security deposits, especially in the Kashmir valley. The BJP had fielded a total of 62 candidates, but only 28 Hindus and one Sikh candidate secured victory in the Jammu region.
(With PTI inputs)
