Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, May 26: The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would get majority of votes for its President and Vice President candidates from Jammu and Kashmir going by the strength of BJP and its allies including PDP, Peoples Conference etc in the Legislative Assembly, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, whose members comprised Electoral College for two top Constitutional posts of the country, the elections for which were scheduled to be held in July.
This is for the first time in history of the country that the ruling BJP accounted for highest number of 4848 votes for the posts of President and Vice President among all political parties in the State having three out of five Lok Sabha members, one out of four Rajya Sabha MPs and 28 out of 87 MLAs.
Official sources told the Excelsior that Jammu and Kashmir with six Lok Sabha MPs, four Rajya Sabha members and 87 elected MLAs accounted for 12,636 votes in the election of President and Vice President, which was likely to be announced by the Election Commission of India next month and could be held in the month of July. The MLCs and two Nominated women MLAs are not eligible to cast votes in the elections of President and Vice President.
Sources said each MLA of Jammu and Kashmir has vote value of 72 for both President and Vice President elections while the MPs (both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha) have vote value of 708.
BJP with 4848 votes topped the tally for President and Vice President elections followed by its Alliance partner, the PDP, which would have 4140 votes. Opposition National Conference has 1788 votes and Congress 1572 votes. Four Independent MLAs would account for 288 votes. BJP’s vote bank included its allies —two MLAs of Peoples Conference and Independent MLA from Zanskar, Bakir Rizvi, who had recently switched over from PDP to BJP.
Clubber together, PDP and BJP would have a vote bank of 8988 while NC and Congress had 3360 votes. Independents would have 288 votes. This means that Alliance partners—PDP and BJP would account for maximum number of votes for the election of President and Vice President.
BJP’s four MPs in Jammu and Kashmir (three Lok Sabha and one Rajya Sabha) accounted for 2832 votes while party’s 28 MLAs—25 of its own, two from Peoples Conference and Independent Bakir Rizvi would have total of 2016 votes, taking party’s vote bank to 4848. BJP represents Jammu-Poonch, Udhampur-Doda and Ladakh seats of Lok Sabha while PDP and NC have one Lok Sabha seat each—Baramulla and Srinagar respectively. Sixth Lok Sabha seat in J&K, Anantnag-Pulwama is vacant as by-poll for the constituency was deferred by the Elections Commission due to unrest in the Valley.
Of four Rajya Sabha seats of Jammu and Kashmir, PDP has two while BJP and Congress have one each.
PDP would have 2016 votes from its 28 MLAs and 2124 votes for its three MPs (two Rajya Sabha members and one Lok Sabha MP) totaling 4140 votes for the two prestigious elections.
National Conference would have 1080 votes from its 15 MLAs and 708 votes from its lone Lok Sabha member Dr Farooq Abdullah, who was recently elected from Srinagar constituency. Total NC vote bank comes out at 1788. Similarly, Congress, which is second largest Opposition party in the State behind National Conference would have 864 votes from its 12 MLAs and 708 votes from its lone Rajya Sabha member (Ghulam Nabi Azad, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha), totaling 572 votes.
Battle-lines for the election of President of India have clearly been drawn with NC working president and former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah today joining the Opposition meeting called by Congress president Sonia Gandhi to discuss the strategy for fielding joint Opposition candidate for President.
President Pranab Mukherjee and Vice President Dr Hamid Ansari’s term will come to an end in August. Mukherjee has one term of five years while Ansari had two terms of five years each.
Ruling NDA and Opposition haven’t announced their candidates for the post of President so far.
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