Barring the Ladakh parliamentary constituency, majority of the contesting candidates lost their security deposit in five other Lok Sabha constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir where 51 of them even failed to get one per cent of the valid votes.
The BJP retained three parliamentary seats of Jammu,Udhampur and Ladakh, while the National Conference swept the polls in theKashmir valley, winning all the three seats of Srinagar, Anantnag andBaramulla.
A total of 79 candidates were in the fray for the sixparliamentary seats, but 63 of them lost their security deposit of Rs 25,000and Rs 12,500 (for schedule tribe and scheduled caste candidates) as theyfailed to get the minimum required one-sixth (16.67 per cent) of the totalpolled valid votes, according to official data by the Election Commission ofIndia.
The Ladakh parliamentary seat which was won by 33-year-oldBJP leader Jamyang Tsering Namgyal — the youngest among the six winners fromthe state — was the only constituencywhere rest of the three candidates managed to save their deposits.
Namgyal got 42,914 votes (33.94 per cent) and defeated hisnearest rival and independent candidate Sajjad Hussain who secured 31,984 votes(25.3 per cent). Congress rebel candidate Asgar Ali Karbalai came third with29,365 votes (23.23 per cent) followed by Congress’ official candidate RigzinSpalbar who polled 21,241 votes (16.8 per cent).
The Ladakh Lok Sabha constituency is the largest in India interms of area but has the lowest number of over 1.71 lakh voters in the state.A total of over 1.26 lakh voters had exercised their franchise with 922 of thempreferring None Of The Above (NOTA), which was 0.73 per cent of the totalvoting.
The voting trend in the Jammu parliamentary constituency,where the highest 24 candidates were in the fray, revealed a direct contestbetween BJP’s Jugal Kishore and senior Congress leader and former ministerRaman Bhalla.
While Kishore retained the seat for the party by getting8,58,066 votes (58.02 per cent), Bhalla got 5,55,191 votes (37.54 per cent).
The rest of the 22 candidates, including patron of Jammu andKashmir National Panthers Party Bhim Singh, Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan (DSS)founder and former BJP minister Lal Singh and BSP leader Badri Nath got belowone per cent votes.
The constituency had recorded the highest 72.16 per centpolling in the state and only 2,618 among 14,78,795 voters pushed the NOTAbutton.
Similarly, the Udhampur parliamentary constituency, whichwas retained by union minister Jitendra Singh by a huge margin of 3.57 lakhvotes defeating Dogra scion and Congress leader Vikramaditya Singh, saw 10candidates loosing their security deposit.
The BJP’s candidate got 7,24,311 votes (61.38 per cent)against the Congress candidate who polled 3,67,659 votes (31.1 per cent).
Two other Rajputs in the fray — JKNPP chairman and formerminister Harsh Dev Singh and DSS founder (Lal Singh) — got 2.06 and 1.61 percent votes, respectively.
Seven other candidates got below one per cent votes despitethe constituency recording the second highest voter turnout at 70.2 per cent.Among the 11.80 lakh voters, 7568 voters preferred NOTA.
In Srinagar, where only 14.1 per cent of over 12.94 lakhelectorate exercised their right, 10 of the 12 candidates lost their depositswith eight even failing to reach one per cent mark.
National Conference president Farooq Abdullah retained theseat by getting 1,06,750 votes (57.14 per cent), defeating Aga Syed Mohsin ofthe PDP, who got 36,700 votes (19.64 per cent).
People’s Conference candidate Irfan Raza Ansari was the onlyother candidate who managed double figures with 15.4 per cent (28,773 votes).
The 83-year-old Abdullah — the three-time former chiefminister — has so far lost an election only once in his 42-year politicalcareer since his debut in 1980. This was his fourth win in the parliamentaryelections.
The Anantnag parliamentary constituency, where the secondhighest 18 candidates, including former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, werelocked in a multi-cornered contest, saw 15 candidates losing their securitydeposits.
The seat, where election was held in three phases due tosecurity concerns, registered the lowest voter turnout of only 8.76 per cent inthe state. It was won by National Conference candidate and former judge HasnainMasoodi.
Masoodi got 40,180 votes (32.17 per cent), followed by stateCongress chief G A Mir, who got 33,504 votes (26.83 per cent).
Mufti, who had won the seat in 2014 before resigning tobecome the first women chief minister in 2016, polled only 30,524 votes (24.44per cent).
A dozen other candidates, including BJP’s Sofi Yousuf,failed to reach double figures as far as the voting percentage is concerned.Eleven of the candidates ended up below one per cent.
The Baramulla parliamentary constituency was won by seniorNC leader Mohammad Akbar Lone after securing 1,33,426 (29.29 per cent) votes,defeating Raja Aijaz Ali of the Peoples’ Conference, who got 1,03,193 (22.65per cent). Engineer Rashid managed 1,02,168 votes (22.43 per cent).
The constituency has recorded the highest 34.71 per centvoting in the Valley. Six of the candidates, including from the PDP, theCongress and the BJP, got only 11.75 (53,530), 7.58 (34,532) and 1.73 per cent(7,894 votes), respectively.
While two candidates received below one per cent votes, theNOTA got the maximum 1.78 per cent (8,055 votes) in the constituency, which wasthe highest in all the six seats in the state.Incidentally, forty-five candidates had securedfar less votes than NOTA which had got a total of 21,724 votes across thestate.