Former High Court judge Hassnain Massodi of the NC, who was seen as a dark horse, emerged winner from Anantnag parliamentary seat, defeating Congress candidate and JKPCC chief GA Mir by around 7000 votes.
Interestingly, NC and Congress had entered into a pre-pollalliance with the former leaving two seats of Jammu to contest for the latter.
In turn, Congress had left Srinagar seat for NC.
However, both parties fielded their candidates on Anantnagand Baramulla seats terming the contest as “friendly fight”, which however, didnot prove to be friendly at all.
While Masoodi secured 40180 votes, Mir and Mehbooba Muftirespectively got 33504 votes and 30524 votes.
With her party yet to recover from a rebellion that led todesertion of a few legislators, Peoples Democratic Party President MehboobaMufti on Thursday tasted her first electoral defeat from southern Kashmir inher 23-year-long political career.
She had won all six previous elections from southernKashmir—two Parliament and rest assembly.
The only time she had lost an election was in 1999 when shewas defeated by her archrival Omar Abdullah in the Lok Sabha polls fromSrinagar seat.
Her first electoral victory was in assembly elections of1996 on Congress ticket from Bijbehara, her home constituency.
Later, on she went on to win five consecutive electionsstarting from Pahalgam assembly seat in 2002, followed by Anantnag Lok Sabha in2004, Wachi assembly seat in 2008, Anantnag LS seat again in 2014 and finally2016 by-elections from Anantnag assembly seat.
However, this time around, she stood a distant third.
The overall turnout for Anantnag Lok Sabha seat had remaineda dismal 8 per cent with Anantnag district recording the highest 13 percent andPulwama, the lowest 1.51 percent.
Kulgam and Shopian districts had witnessed 10 and 2.44percent polling respectively.
With low voter turnout NC, Congress, and PDP were allbanking on their strongholds. And the bulk of the voting did indeed happen inthese pockets such as Larnoo in Kokernag; Kapran in Dooru; Chatergul inShangus; Khovripora area in Pahalgam; DH Pora in Noorabad; Chitragam in Wachiand Khrew in Pampore assembly segments where moderate to a good number of voteswere polled.
The voting results suggest that PDP did not do well in anyof these pockets, giving edge to its rivals NC and Congress.
The party’s defeat in its once stronghold, political punditsbelieve, would have a huge bearing on its political future.
A political analyst said that a defeated Mehbooba would havean uphill task of keeping her flock together in the run up to Assembly polls inJ&K.
“The party since its formation in 1999 was going fromstrength to strength till 2015 when it entered into an alliance with BJP. AfterSouth and later North, it had made inroads into Central Kashmir too. But nowthe party is nowhere in the race in North and Central Kashmir. It has lost itsgrip over South Kashmir too,” an analyst said.