Counting for the 2024 Jammu and Kashmir Assembly election – the first since Article 370 was scrapped in August 2019 and the first since the 2014 poll – began 8 am.
In very early leads (counting of postal ballots), the Congress-National Conference alliance has taken a big lead in what was to supposed to be a tight race. At 9 am the Congress-NC was ahead in 29 seats and the BJP in 20. The People’s Democratic Party of ex Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti was leading in six and independent candidates were in the pole seat in three seats.
The race to control the former state’s 95 Assembly seats – of which five have been nominated by Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha in a controversial move – is predicted to be a close one.
Exit polls have given the Congress-NC alliance a slight edge. An aggregate of three indicates the Congress-NC will win 43 seats and the BJP 26, with the PDP winning between four and 12.
Exit polls, therefore, predict a hung Assembly; the J&K Assembly has 90 seats with the majority mark set at 46. Should exit polls – and they often get it wrong – hold true, the PDP could be the ‘kingmaker’ for the Congress-NC, but not for the BJP, which will also need support from non-aligned lawmakers.
It is with this in mind that NC leaders Farooq Abdullah and his son, Omar Abdullah, and the Congress have criticised the move by the LG – the centre’s rep in J&K – to nominate five members. The power to nominate was granted after the Delimitation Commission increased the number of seats in J&K.
The five will include two women, two Kashmiri Pandits, and a displaced person from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir – to the Legislative Assembly, increasing the total number of seats to 95.
The PDP, at this time, has ruled out a re-run of its 2019 alliance with the BJP, insisting it will only consider a ‘secular alliance’. That, inevitably, sparked talk of aligning with the Congress-NC combine.
Last night NC patriarch Farooq Abdullah said “why not” when asked about the PDP as an ally, although that party’s senior leader, Iltija Mufti, quickly called such speculation “unnecessary”.
