Anantnag, Rajouri : As balloting in Jammu and Kashmir concludes with Anantnag-Rajouri parliamentary constituency going to polls in the sixth phase of the ongoing Lok Sabha elections today on Saturday, May 25, an interesting contest awaits with PD Chief Mehbooba Mufti and a top leader of National Conference Mian Altaf Ahmd in the fray to win this high-profile seat. Earlier, the Election Commission had revised the date of polling in the constituency from May 7 to May 25 after it received representations to reschedule the date of polling due to various issues about “logistics, communication and natural barrier of connectivity.”
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) chief and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti will be facing a high-stake contest against National Conference (NC) candidate Mian Altaf Ahmad. Additionally, Zafar Iqbal Manhas of the Apni Party is also contesting the polls, making the contest a triangular fight.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has however not announced any candidate from any of the three seats in Kashmir, including Anantnag-Rajouri. The Congress has already announced support for the National candidate and has actively campaigned for him .
In 2019, NC’s Hasnain Masoodi defeated Mufti from the seat by a close margin of over 6000 votes. This makes it a high-stake battle this time as the former J&K CM Mehbooba Mufti would be aiming to wrest the seat, which was once deemed a PDP bastion. Mufti had earlier won the seat in 2004 and 2014. Her late father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed also won the seat in 1998.
Recently, Mehbooba Mufti hit out at BJP and said that changes brought by it in the aftermath of Article 370 abrogation after August 5, 2019 are no longer “acceptable” adding that the people will give the befitted answer to them via vote.
“In the first and the second phases of the polling, people voted in huge numbers. I am hopeful that people in South Kashmir will vote in even bigger numbers than North Kashmir. People want to give a message to the government in Delhi that the atrocities committed since 2019 are no longer acceptable and they will answer to it via vote,” Mufti told reporters.
