Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Dec 23: Congress party, which has shown worst performance in Jammu province, has received consolation from the Ladakh region where it has managed to increase tally of seats in Legislative Assembly from one in 2008 elections to three in polls concluded today. Moreover, the party has considerably increased its vote share in all the four Assembly constituencies in comparison to Parliament elections held early this year when it lost to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
During the 2008 Assembly elections, Congress won only Leh seat while as National Conference candidates emerged winner in Kargil, Zanskar and Nubra Assembly segments. During 2014 Assembly polls, National Conference fielded candidates from Kargil and Nubra Assembly segments and extended support to independent candidate from Zanskar while as it choose not to field any candidate from Leh seat.
Unlike rest of the State where Congress suffered humiliating defeat, the party performed well in comparison to 2008 elections and increased its tally from one to three by winning Leh, Nubra and Kargil Assembly segments.
From Leh seat, Nawang Rigzin Jora, who remained Minister during past 12 years, managed to emerge winner by defeating BJP’s Chering Dorje while as Congress candidate Deldan Namgail won Nubra seat by defeating sitting MLA of National Conference Tsetan Namgyal.
Asgar Ali Karbalaie, who is also sitting Chief Executive Councilor of Hill Council Kargil, won the Kargil seat for Congress party by defeating People’s Democratic Party leader Anayat Ali while as National Conference supported independent candidate Syed Mohammad Baqir Rizvi defeated Congress candidate Ghulam Raza from Zanskar Assembly constituency.
The winning of these three seats by the Congress was almost uncertain keeping in view the Assembly segment wise votes it had obtained during the Lok Sabha elections held early this year when party’s candidate Tsering Samphel lost to BJP’s Thupstan Chhewang. However, within a short span of few months, Congress managed to improve its performance that too at a time when BJP was expecting two to three seats from the Ladakh region keeping in view the prevailing Modi wave.
As per the statistics available with EXCELSIOR, during 2014 Lok Sabha polls, BJP bagged 23851 votes from Leh Assembly segments as compared to 19231 by the Congress. But during the Assembly elections, BJP’s vote bank nosedived considerably to 19909 votes and Congress vote share increased to 27585.
Similarly, during Lok Sabha elections BJP obtained 1963 votes from Kargil as compared to 732 by the Congress. Though both the parties increased their vote share during Assembly elections but Congress riding on the popularity of its candidate bagged whooping votes in comparison to BJP. From this seat, BJP candidate obtained 2317 votes as against 22911 by Congress. Even National Conference and PDP candidates bagged much more votes than the BJP.
Though the vote share of both BJP and Congress in Nubra decreased during Assembly polls as compared to Lok Sabha elections but major setback was suffered by BJP. During Parliament elections, BJP had obtained 3958 and Congress 5009 votes but BJP’s tally nosedived to 1947 while as Congress managed to retain 3936 votes.
As far as Zanskar Assembly segment is concerned, Congress managed to increase vote bank much faster than the BJP after Lok Sabha elections. During Assembly polls, Congress took 6197 and BJP 2292 votes as compared to 1430 and 1339 votes respectively during Parliament polls.
In this way, Congress caused dent to the BJP’s plans of retaining its performance of Lok Sabha polls in order to bag two or three seats from the region.
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