Block Development Council elections

The Modi government tried to portray that its decision to abrogate Article 370 was received warmly in Jammu and Kashmir, but the outcome of the Block Development Council elections, with the BJP winning only 81 of the 307 bloIn contrast to its handsome show in the election to the six Lok Sabha seats of unified Jammu and Kashmir held in April-May, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in for a rude shock in the Block Development Council (BDC) elections held in the divided Jammu and Kashmir on October 25. This despite the fact that the BJP claimed that its decision to abrogate the erstwhile State’s special status on August 5 was received warmly in the Jammu region, where the predominantly Hindu population harbours aspirations that are dissimilar to those of the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, which has been overwhelmed by three decades of militancy and is generally responsive to political idioms such as “autonomy” and “self-rule”. In the BDC elections, 1,065 candidates were in the fray across 22 districts.

In the Lok Sabha election, the BJP won the Jammu, Udhampur and Ladakh seats, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) the Anantnag and Baramulla seats, and the National Conference (N.C.) the Srinagar seat. The Ladakh region has since become a Union Territory. In Jammu, the BJP’s candidate, Jugal Kishore, retained the seat by trumping Raman Bhalla of the Congress by 3,02,875 votes, and in Udhampur, Union Minister Jitendra Singh, the incumbent MP, defeated the Congress’ Vikramaditya Singh by a margin of 3.5 lakh votes.cks, proves otherwise. By Anando Bhakto

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