J&K polls: Only two Hindu faces among 48 winners of NC-Cong alliance

Jammu, Oct 8 (PTI) With the National Conference and Congress alliance set to form the next government in Jammu and Kashmir after crossing the majority mark by winning 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.

However, the BJP which had emerged victorious on 29 seats have 28 Hindus and one Sikh member as none of its Muslim candidates, including two former ministers, managed to win.

National Conference’s Surinder Choudhary emerged as the giant killer when he thumped Jammu and Kashmir BJP chief Ravinder Raina by a margin of 7,819 votes from the Nowshera constituency of Rajouri district.

Choudhary, a former MLC, polled 35,069 votes against Raina’s 27,250 votes.

Raina had won the Nowshera seat in the 2014 assembly elections by defeating Choudhary, who was then fighting on a PDP ticket by a margin of over 10,000 votes.

However, Choudhary resigned from the PDP in 2022 to join the BJP before ending his over a year-long association with the party to join 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.

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 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 Jammu region.