Two candidates from National Conference made it to the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly for the record seventh term on Tuesday.
Party’s senior leader and former finance minister Abdul Rahim Rather won seventh term from central Budgam district’s Chrar-i-Sharief constituency, which he represented from 1977 to 2014.
Rather’s only electoral defeat came in the 2014 polls, when he came second against People’s Democratic Party (PDP) leader Ghulam Nabi Lone Hanjura. Interestingly, Rather won the latest battle against Hanjura by a margin of 11496 votes, according to data available with GNS.
Rather’s party colleague and former minister Ali Mohammad Sagar, also won for the seventh consecutive term to maintain his unbeaten run. He polled 14906 votes to defeat his nearest rival, Sheikh Imran (4994 votes), an independent candidate, by a margin of 9912 votes.
Sagar, a sexagenarian now, won his first assembly election as a 25-year-old from the Batamaloo seat, retaining it in the 1987 polls.
He shifted to the Khanyar seat in 1996 and has been an MLA for five consecutive terms.
Several other candidates made it to Assembly for sixth and fifth terms in the assembly.
Prominent among them is National Conference leader and former speaker Mubarak Gul, who won for the sixth term as an MLA from the Eidgah constituency in Srinagar. Gul polled 7700 votes and won by a margin of 1680 votes by defeating his nearest rival Ghulam Nabi Bhat who contested as independent and garnered 6020 votes, almost 2700 more than PDP’s Mohammad Khursheed Alam who could manage only 3302 votes.
CPI(M) leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami also won for the fifth straight term from the Kulgam seat in south Kashmir by defeating independent candidate Sayar Ahmad Reshi by 7838 votes.
Tarigami secured 33634 votes to defeat Reshi, who received 25796 votes in his maiden assembly poll contest. PDP’s Kulgam candidate Mohammad Amin Dar came third as he secured 7561 votes in the constituency segment which saw ten candidates trying their luck in the electoral fray.
At the same time, PDP’s Abdul Rehman Bhat— who had represented Bijbehara four times — could not make it to become MLA for the fifth term as he came second against Reyaz Ahmad Khan of National Conference from Shangus Anantnag East constituency. Khan secured 30345 votes to defeat Bhat by a margin of 14532 votes. (GNS)
