BJP’s contrasting facts: Highest vote share; blank in 2 out of 3 regions

Despite coming second in the recently announced Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP’s vote share has shown a tremendous surge in the State as the party has by-passed PDP’s vote share, the party that stood first by winning 28 seats. The BJP leaders assert that had Kashmir sprung a surprise as expected by them, the party’s vote share would have been more amazing.
According to the final data available, BJP has bagged 1107194 votes which means 23 per cent vote share. As per the figures, PDP has gained 1092203 votes at 22.5 percent.
“Our vote share is huge. It’s the total output of the votes we have got from all three regions of the State. This indicates that people of JK have accepted BJP as their own party and in future you will see us emerging as the single largest party of the State with more than majority of seats,” BJP’s JK affairs in-charge, Avinash Rai Khanna told Greater Kashmir.
However, negating the BJP claim of statewide representation is the fact that the party couldn’t manage even a single seat in two out of three regions in the state. Despite the aggressive campaign by top-level BJP leadership including PM Narendra Modi, the party drew blank in Kashmir and Ladakh regions.
Its women magic too failed to woo voters in Srinagar. In Srinagar, BJP’s three women candidates, Dr Hina Bhat, Neelam Gash and Darakshan Andrabi couldn’t cross even 2000 votes in their respective constituencies—Amira Kadal, Zadibal and Sonwar.
“I agree that in Kashmir we perhaps failed to convince the voters. I think there was some fault in our assessment. But the vote share we have got from Kashmir is not that less. We will definitely introspect and see what went wrong,” Khanna said.
A cursory look at the vote share of a few BJP candidates in Jammu region shows that majority of BJP leaders have marked their victory by a huge margin of votes. Gandhi Nagar constituency is a case in point where BJP candidate bagged 56679 votes defeating his nearest rival and former Congress minister Raman Bhalla who secured only 39902 votes.
In Chamb assembly segment, former deputy chief minister and senior Congress leader Tara Chand could bag only 21243 votes. BJP candidate Dr Krishan Lal marked his victory by bagging 36033 votes.
In Chenab valley, where Congress was considered as a strong force, BJP candidates managed their victory by huge margin of votes. In Doda, BJP candidate Shakti Raj won by a margin of over 4500 votes against former Congress minister Abdul Majeed Wani.
BJP’s Kashmir affairs in-charge Ramesh Arora said the figures would tremendously increase in future. “We will work hard to improve our vote base in Kashmir, especially in Srinagar,” he said. “At 25, we are in a situation to form the government and you will see that after six years we will have our own government come what may.”
Compared to Parliamentary polls, National Conference vote share has shown an increase of 11 per cent, but if the present results are compared with 2008, the party’s vote share has shown tremendous dip. At 15 seats, NC’s vote share has settled at 20.8 per cent with 1000693 votes. “Our vote share has increased by 11 per cent as compared to Parliamentary polls. We will certainly sit and introspect what exactly went wrong so that in the next elections we could improve our tally to the best of our expectations,” said NC spokesman Junaid Matoo.
The Congress that managed only 12 seats has settled at a vote share of 18 per cent by bagging 867883 votes across the State.