News18
As many as 11 seats in Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections 2024 saw victory margins as wide as 20,000 votes and eight of these seats were bagged by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which stood second in the terms of the overall J&K election result.
Following the counting of votes on Tuesday, the National Conference won 42 seats in the 90-seat Assembly, while the BJP won 29. The Congress, which had a poll pact with the National Conference, won six seats and the PDP won just three. One seat each went to the Jammu & Kashmir People’s Conference, the Aam Aadmi Party and the CPM. In addition, seven Independents also made it to the Assembly.
Among the 11 seats with margins in excess of 20,000 votes, two witnessed margins wider than 30,000 votes — Nagrota and Samba — both of which were bagged by the BJP, shows an analysis of the Election Commission data. Victory margin is defined as the difference of votes between the winning candidate and the first runner-up.
The widest victory margin across seats in Jammu and Kashmir was scored by BJP’s Devender Singh Rana, brother of Union minister Jitendra Singh, who won by 30,472 votes in Nagrota. His main opponent was Joginder Singh from the National Conference. Rana bagged 48,113 votes against Singh’s 17,641. Interestingly, Rana was also the richest candidate from the Jammu region with assets worth Rs 126 crore.
The second-highest victory margin was reported by BJP’s Surjeet Singh Slathia who won from Samba with 43,182 votes against Independent Ravinder Singh’s 12,873 votes, a victory margin of 30,309 votes.
The third-highest victory margin went in the favour of Congress leader Ghulam Ahmad Mir who won South Kashmir’s Dooru seat by a margin of 29,728 votes, defeating PDP candidate Mohammad Ashraf Malik.
Other seats won by the BJP where the victory margin was more than 20,000 votes are Jammu North, Akhnoor, Marh, Jammu West, Billawar, and Udhampur West.
Of the 11 seats with 20,000-plus margin, two were bagged by National Conference – Poonch Haveli and Sopore. Irshad Rasool Kar won the Sopore seat by a margin of 20,356 votes and Aijaz Ahmad Jan reported a victory margin of 20,879 votes in Poonch-Haveli.
Former chief minister Omar Abdullah, vice-president of the National Conference and son of party president Farooq Abdullah, won the Budgam seat against PDP’s Aga Syed Muntazir Mehdi by a margin of 18,485 votes.
10 Seats With Victory Margins Below 1,500 Votes
On at least 15 seats across J&K, the victory margin was below 1,500 votes. In seven of these, the victory margin was below 1,000 votes.
PDP’s Rafiq Ahmad Naik, who won from Tral seat, had the lowest victory margin of 460 votes. He was the sole winner with a victory margin below 500 votes.
BJP’s Kishtwar candidate Shagun Parihar defeated NC’s Sajad Kitchloo by just 521 votes, the second lowest margin across the Union Territory.
NC’s Javaid Riyaz won by a margin of 603 votes against People’s Conference leader Imran Ansari.
In Inderwal, it was an Independent vs Independent fight where Pyare Lal Sharma defeated former minister GM Saroori by 643 votes.
The Chairman of Jammu and Kashmir People’s Conference, Sajad Gani Lone, was among the bottom five margins. He retained his family stronghold Handwara by a slim margin of 662 votes.
A total of 25 seats saw victory margins below 5,000 votes. Of these, 22 witnessed victory margins below 4,000 votes and 19 had below 3,000.