In a high stakes election for four Rajya Sabha seats in Jammu and Kashmir, the UT’s BJP president Sat Sharma won a seat polling 32 votes against the saffron party’s strength of 28 MLAs in the legislative assembly.
The ruling National Conference (NC) candidates, Choudhary Ramzan, Sajjad Kichloo and Shammi Oberoi won the other three seats. Sat Sharma polling 4 votes more than the party’s strength does not rule out cross voting by certain MLAs. He defeated Imran Nabi Dar of NC.
BJP had fielded its candidates on three of the four seats but only Sat Sharma won, while the two other candidates Rakesh Mahajan and Ali Mohammad Mir lost the election.
Choudhary Ramzan polled 58 votes, which is the combined strength of the NC along with the Congress, PDP and independents. However, Kichloo got 57 votes which was one less than the combined strength of NC. Shammi Oberoi won the third seat, while the fourth went to Sat Sharma of BJP.
With the NC’s strength of 41 MLAs, 6 of Congress, 5 independents, 1 of CPI(M), 3 of PDP and 1 each of Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) and AAP, the NC expected to win all four seats. The victory of the BJP candidate has come as a surprise.
Polling for the four Rajya Sabha seats ended peacefully as 86 of the 88 MLAs cast their votes, while the detained Doda MLA Mehraj Malik voted through a postal ballot, and Peoples Conference (PC) MLA, Sajad Lone, abstained from voting.
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah led the voting process of his party.
This was the first Rajya Sabha election from Jammu and Kashmir since the abrogation of Article 370 and downgrading and bifurcation of the erstwhile state of J&K into two Union territories on 5 August 2019.
AIP MLA Khurshid Ahmad had also announced support for the NC candidates.
PDP president Mehbooba Mufti had said that three PDP legislators will vote for NC as she expects the support of the government in passage of certain important Bills in the assembly, especially the Land Regularisation Bill for poor people and the regularisation of the services of daily-wagers.
State Congress committee president Tariq Hameed Karra also announced the decision to support the NC despite the differences between the two parties.