With its decision not to field a candidate for Kashmir's Sopore seat, the Bhartiya Janata Party has placed its hopes on the support of independent candidates in the constituency to help it achieve its target of winning more than 44 seats in the 87-member assembly.
The BJP decided not to field its own candidate after one independent candidate, who is fighting first time from Sopore, agreed to support the party if he emerged victorious. Sajad Lone’s People’s Conference, which has already aligned with the BJP, also has a candidate in Sopore.
“The reason for not fielding a candidate in Sopore was only because we couldn’t find any winning candidate,” said Khalid Jehangir, the BJP spokesman for Kashmir. “We left the seat but post-elections we will have any nationalist winning candidate from there with us.”
Aiming for majority
To achieve that aim of winning a majority, the party hopes to sweep the 37 seats in Hindu-dominated Jammu and the four seats in Buddhist-dominated Ladakh. In addition to Sopore, the BJP has been focussing on four seats in Kashmir – Amira Kadal, Habba Kadal and Tral. It hopes to gain an advantage from the significant numbers of migrant Pandit voters as well as the fact that the boycott called by separatists could keep many voters away from the polls.
Around 2,200 migrant Pandit voters from Sopore are registered with Election Commission of India, though it is unlikely that all of them will vote. The constituency is a bastion of the vociferous separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani, who has supported the boycott call. In the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year, the voting percentage in this region was only 1.02%. Out of the 1,052 votes polled, the People’s Democratic Party received 535 votes, the National Conference got 262, the BJP got 12, and the Bahujan Samaj Party got only two.
A day before the multi-phased election was set to begin, BJP spokesman Khalid Jehangir said that the party has ground intelligence to suggest that it would win more than 50 seats.
Underestimating the PDP
But some political observers think that the BJP is overestimating itself and underestimating the popularity of the PDP, which could very likely become the single largest party. The decline of the National Conference and the Congress in recent years has given edge to the PDP rather than the BJP as the people in the Valley can relate more strongly to it.
Though the BJP has used the print and electronic media to woo voters, its candidates aren’t very visible on the ground. Neither are their supporters.
Today’s phase of the elections will decide the fate of 123 candidates in 15 assembly constituencies. Separatist leaders have called for a strike in the areas going to the ballot box today.
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The BJP decided not to field its own candidate after one independent candidate, who is fighting first time from Sopore, agreed to support the party if he emerged victorious. Sajad Lone’s People’s Conference, which has already aligned with the BJP, also has a candidate in Sopore.
“The reason for not fielding a candidate in Sopore was only because we couldn’t find any winning candidate,” said Khalid Jehangir, the BJP spokesman for Kashmir. “We left the seat but post-elections we will have any nationalist winning candidate from there with us.”
Aiming for majority
To achieve that aim of winning a majority, the party hopes to sweep the 37 seats in Hindu-dominated Jammu and the four seats in Buddhist-dominated Ladakh. In addition to Sopore, the BJP has been focussing on four seats in Kashmir – Amira Kadal, Habba Kadal and Tral. It hopes to gain an advantage from the significant numbers of migrant Pandit voters as well as the fact that the boycott called by separatists could keep many voters away from the polls.
Around 2,200 migrant Pandit voters from Sopore are registered with Election Commission of India, though it is unlikely that all of them will vote. The constituency is a bastion of the vociferous separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani, who has supported the boycott call. In the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year, the voting percentage in this region was only 1.02%. Out of the 1,052 votes polled, the People’s Democratic Party received 535 votes, the National Conference got 262, the BJP got 12, and the Bahujan Samaj Party got only two.
A day before the multi-phased election was set to begin, BJP spokesman Khalid Jehangir said that the party has ground intelligence to suggest that it would win more than 50 seats.
Underestimating the PDP
But some political observers think that the BJP is overestimating itself and underestimating the popularity of the PDP, which could very likely become the single largest party. The decline of the National Conference and the Congress in recent years has given edge to the PDP rather than the BJP as the people in the Valley can relate more strongly to it.
Though the BJP has used the print and electronic media to woo voters, its candidates aren’t very visible on the ground. Neither are their supporters.
Today’s phase of the elections will decide the fate of 123 candidates in 15 assembly constituencies. Separatist leaders have called for a strike in the areas going to the ballot box today.
