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| PDP, BJP likely to win 10 seats | | LC elections | | Rustam
Early Times Report
Jammu, Feb 11: The Election Commission of India on Tuesday announced the schedule for election to 11 seats of the J&K Legislative Council. The election will be held on March 2. The notification for holding the polls will be issued on February 12. February 18 is the last date for filing nomination papers. Scrutiny of nominations will take place on February 19 and February 21 will be last date for withdrawal of nominations.
The election will be held as posts of 16 MLCs, both nominated and elected, will fall vacant in March. Those who would be completing their term on March 8 and March 27include Amrit Malhotra (Chairman of Legislative Council - Congress-nominated), Javed Rana (Deputy Chairman of the LC, NC), Sheikh Ghulam Rasool (NC, now in PDP - nominated), Ajatshatru Singh (NC, now in BJP -- nominated), Subash Gupta (Congress-nominated), Ajay Sadhotra (NC - nominated), Bashir Ahmad Magray (Congress-nominated) Aga Sayeed (NC -- elected), B R Kundal (Congress - now not in Congress -- elected), Khalid Nujeeb Suhrawardhy (NC -- Elected), Nurbo Gylatsan (Congress-elected), Ravinder Sharma (Congress - nominated), Rafiq Ahmad Shah (NPP - now in PDP -- elected), Ghulam Qadir Pardesi (NC-nominated), Vijay Bakaya (NC-elected) and Syed Asgar Ali (PDP-elected). Nurbo Gylatson of Congress had been elected against the seat reserved for Leh and Aga Sayeed of the NC was elected against the seat reserved for Kargil. Three MLCs whose posts have fallen vacant after their elections to Assembly are Abdul Majeed Laram and Devender Singh Rana of the NC and Ashraf Mir of the PDP.
The PDP and the BJP, which contested the Rajya Sabha election together on March 7and won three out of four Rajya Sabha seats in J&K, are likely to win 9 to 10 Legislative Council seats, which will be filled by election provided they again contest the election jointly. The PDP and the BJP have 53 MLAs in the 87-member Assembly. These two parties also enjoy the support of four more MLAs - two independent MLAs, one each from Jammu and Ladakh - and two People's Conference MLAs. All these four MLAs had voted for the PDP and the BJP candidates in the Rajya Sabha election. To be more precise, the PDP and the BJP enjoy the support of 57 MLAs.
If these 57 MLAs vote like the voted in the Rajya Sabha election, the PDP and the BJP would win a minimum of 9 out of 11 seats. The reason is that the ECI will issue seven separate notifications for filling 11 elected seats. While separate notifications will be issued for three seats recently vacated by Abdul Majeed Laram and Devender Singh Rana of the NC and Ashraf Mir of the PDP, there will be two separate notification for two seats reserved for Leh and Kargil districts and one notification for four seats of Jammu province. As for Kashmir province, there will be only one notification for two seats of Kashmir province. It is this that would enable the PDP-BJP combine to capture nine seats with utmost ease. There could a tough contest on one seat of Kashmir Valley and the fate of the contesting candidates would be determined by MLAs like Mom Yasin and Er Rashid like they determined the fate of Congress candidate Ghulam Nabi Azad in the Rajya Sabha election. BJP would have won the Rajya Sabha seat in cause these three MLAs had not voted for Azad.
As far as the NC and the Congress are concerned, they will win one seat with utmost ease in case they contest the election jointly and they could also win another seat in case they manipulated the support of a few more MLAs. The NC and the Congress share between them only 27 seats in the Assembly. Even if the NC and the Congress distribute the votes between their two candidates, they would not be in position to win the two seats they are likely to contest. For, the PDP and BJP candidates would have 19 votes each.
Will the Congress field its candidates for the Legislative Council elections? It is doubtful if it does so. The reason is that the NC MLAs had voted for Azad in the Rajya Sabha election on the reported condition that the Congress would support the NC candidates for the Legislative Council elections. As per the reported agreement reached between AICC president Sonia Gandhi and NC working president and former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, the NC had promised support to the candidature of Azad and the Congress assured the NC of its support for the NC candidates who would seek election to the Legislative Council.
All in all, it can be said that it's advantage the PDP and the BJP, which will win a minimum of nine elected LC seats and get all the eight nominated seats. In all, there will be 19 vacancies available in the month of March. Besides, the PDP and the BJP, if they form the coalition government before the scheduled elections, would be able to win another elected seat in the Legislative Council as they would have by then nominated two women to the Legislative Assembly. It would be a PDP-BJP-dominated Legislative Council by the end of March in case they contested the election together. The Legislative Council is a 36-member body. |
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