THE DEFEAT of National Conference candidate Imran Nabi Dar in the Rajya Sabha polls marked the ruling party coming full circle after 14 years, when in 2011 it stood on the winning side with the support of seven BJP MLAs who defied party whip during election to the now defunct Legislative Council. Dar, who polled 22 votes for the fourth vacant Rajya Sabha seat on Friday, remained seven short of the 29 votes needed to win the contest.
BJP’s J&K unit president Sat Sharma, a chartered accountant by profession, clinched the fourth seat by polling 32 votes against his party’s total strength of 28 MLAs in the Assembly. Three votes cast in favour of NC’s Dar were declared invalid, sources said.
In the 88-member J&K Assembly, the NC with the combined strength of its allies — Congress (6), CPM (one) and five Independent MLAs — had 53 votes, including its own 41 MLAs, making its win on three RS seats a cakewalk.
In contrast, the Opposition BJP had 28 MLAs of its own and the non-BJP opposition had six votes — three PDP MLAs, one People’s Conference and two Independents.
As only the NC and the BJP had fielded candidates for the Rajya Sabha vacancies, the non-BJP opposition members, except Sajad Lone of the People’s Conference who abstained, had assured their support to the ruling party candidates.
Going by the numbers with the ruling NC, it had more than the 30 votes required to win the first two seats on its own. While it had 30 votes for the third seat, it needed the support from non-BJP opposition members for the fourth seat for which it would have been left with only 23 votes.
However, after the counting of the votes, NC candidate G S Oberoi, also known as Shammi Oberoi, was found having polled 31 votes and Dar managing only 22.
Of the remaining seven votes the NC was hoping for, four were polled for BJP’s Sharma, raising the number of votes in his favour to 32, while three others were found invalid.
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who is also the National Conference vice-president, attributed the defeat of the NC candidate on the fourth seat to “betrayal”, saying the party was “let down at the last moment’’.
From where did the BJP get four extra votes and who were the MLAs who invalidated their votes by marking a wrong preference number, he asked while denying cross-voting by his own party legislators.
‘Betrayal’ now & then
Cross-voting during elections is nothing new in J&K Assembly. In April 2011, during election to six vacancies in the now defunct Legislative Council of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, seven of the 11 BJP MLAs had defied party whip and cross-voted to ensure the election of the NC candidate, leaving their own party nominee Thakur Ranjit Singh with only four votes.
During the 1996 elections to the then J&K Legislative Council, wrong preference by two National Conference MLAs during voting had led to the election of BJP’s Daya Krishan Kotwal.
In 2003, NC’s Trilochan Singh Wazir got elected to the Legislative Council on the basis of cross-voting by MLAs belonging to the then PDP-Congress alliance.
“We had been saying this (about cross-voting) since the beginning,’’ said J&K Pradesh Congress Committee chief spokesperson Ravinder Sharma. “If the NC could not manage the numbers when Independents were on its side, then how could we?’’ he said, adding that Congress decided not to contest the fourth RS seat in view of the stakes being high.
Setting speculation to rest, jailed Aam Aadmi Party MLA from Doda Mehraj Malik on Saturday said he had voted for NC candidates in the “larger interests” of J&K. Malik is currently in Kathua district jail following his detention under Public Safety Act on grounds of threatening public order.
“Even after casting my vote for the NC from jail, without them ever reaching out or making the slightest effort to seek my support, I am now being questioned by some of their leaders,’’ he said in a statement from jail which was uploaded on his account on X by his PA.
“Let me make it clear: the National Conference was never serious about winning this Rajya Sabha seat,’’ Malik said in his statement, adding that he “chose to vote for them believing my vote could make a difference’’.
“Unfortunately, now I realise that some among them were already compromised and had decided to side with the BJP,’’ he said.
Supporting Malik’s statement, Junaid Azim Mattu, a leader of the J&K Apni Party and former mayor of Srinagar Municipal Corporation, in a post on X said: “For NC to accuse Mehraj Malik of siding with the BJP is outrightly shameless, outrageous and despicable’’.
Historian and political analyst Prof Hari Om said the outcome of Rajya Sabha polls was on expected lines in view of growing discontent within the ruling National Conference and its allies, especially the Congress. Taking advantage of this discontent within the ruling block, the BJP has succeeded in puncturing the balloon of the NC-led coalition, he said.