LS Polls: Victorious candidates maintain lead from start to finish in J&K

Srinagar, Jun 04: The vote counting for the five Jammu and Kashmir Lok Sabha seats began on Tuesday morning, and the victorious candidates maintained their lead from the outset, never falling behind their rivals throughout the process.
During the 20 rounds of vote counting, the winners—two from the National Conference (NC) and an independent candidate, jailed leader Engineer Abdul Rasheed Sheikh—held their leads consistently. From the beginning these candidates dominated each round, indicating a decisive victory in all three constituencies: Srinagar, Baramulla, and Anantnag-Rajouri. Similarly in Jammu, BJP was leading from the dusk to the dawn.
Interestingly two former chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti suffered defeats from two Lok Sabha constituencies of Kashmir. Kashmir Valley has three Lok Sabha constituencies, National Conference leaders Aga Rahullah and Mian Altaf won the Srinagar (Central Kashmir) and Anantnag (South Kashmir) Lok Sabha constituencies, respectively.
Similarly, jailed leader Er Rashid emerged as the winner from the Baramulla (North Kashmir) constituency. Among the three, Mian Altaf and Aga Rahullah were contesting the Parliamentary polls for the first time, while Er Rashid had fought unsuccessfully in the 2019 elections.
On the microblogging platform X (formerly Twitter), Omar Abdullah was the first to acknowledge his defeat, congratulating Engineer Rashid on his victory in North Kashmir. He expressed doubt that Rashid’s victory would lead to his release from prison or improved representation for North Kashmir, but emphasized that the voters’ decision must be respected in a democracy.
Mehbooba Mufti also expressed her respect for the people’s verdict and thanked her PDP supporters. “Respecting the verdict of the people, I thank my PDP workers & leaders for their hard work & support despite all the odds. My deepest gratitude to the people who voted for me. Winning & losing is part of the game & won’t deter us from our path. Congratulations to Mian Sahab for his victory,” she wrote.
This election was the first major one in the region since the abrogation of Article 370, which had granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir. Omar Abdullah, running from North Kashmir’s Baramulla seat, was defeated by jailed leader and two-time MLA Engineer Rashid, who contested as an independent candidate.
With Rashid in jail, his sons Abrar, 23, and Asrar, 21, led the campaign, drawing massive crowds at rallies in the constituency. Baramulla was one of the most closely watched seats, with People Conference president Sajad Lone also in the race.
According to Election Commission of India data, Rashid won the seat by a margin of over two lakh votes. The Mehbooba Mufti-led Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) also fielded its former Rajya Sabha MP in Baramulla, but he did not emerge as a main challenger.
In the Jammu division, BJP’s Jitendra Singh was leading from all rounds from morning and defeated his nearest rival Ch. Lal Singh of INC by one lac twenty-four thousand three hundred seventy-three votes to win Udhampur segment, Jugal Kishore, the other sitting MP, defeated Raman Bhalla of INC by a margin of 131540 votes to win Jammu parliamentary constituency.
Dr. Jitendra Singh, as per latest data available on ECI website, bagged a total of 571076 votes, while Kishore amassed a total of 677571 votes.
This is the first election of Jammu and Kashmir as a UT since it was a part of the State of Jammu and Kashmir until 2019, when the special status of the State was revoked and it was divided into two Union Territories (Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh) under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019.