Srinagar: BJP candidate Devender Rana won from Nagrota segment with the highest margin while the PDP’s Tral candidate Rafiq Ahmad Naik had the lowest margin for victory in the Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections whose results were declared on Tuesday.
Rana, who had won the 2014 assembly elections on the National Conference (NC) ticket, retained the Nagrota seat on BJP ticket by a margin of 30,472 votes. His nearest rival, NC’s Joginder Singh, got 17,641 votes.
AICC general secretary Ghulam Ahmad Mir also won big with a margin of 29,728 votes, closely followed by Rana’s fellow NC defector to BJP, Surjit Singh Slathia, who won by a margin of 29,481 votes from Samba seat.
The BJP had five other candidates who won the elections by a margin of more than 20,000 votes.
For the NC, which emerged as the single largest party with 42 seats in the 90-member J&K assembly, only two candidates had a victory margin of more than 20,000 votes. Irshad Rasool Kar won the Sopore assembly segment by a margin of 20,356 votes while his party colleague Aijaz Ahmad Jan won by a margin of 20,879 votes from the Poonch-Haveli seat.
PDP’s Naik won the Tral assembly seat in a multi-corner contest with a slender margin of just 460 votes.
Naik polled 10,710 votes followed by Congress candidate Surinder Singh Channi (10,250), NC rebel (9,778) and AIP’s Harbaksh Singh (8,557).
The BJP’s Kishtwar candidate Shagun Parihar won with a slightly higher margin of 521 votes, defeating NC candidate Sajad Kitchloo.
There were five other candidates, including People’s Conference president Sajad Gani Lone who won with a margin of less than 1,000 votes.
NC’s Javaid Riyaz won against People’s Conference candidate Imran Ansari by a margin of just 603 votes.
Independent Pyare Lal Sharma defeated former minister G M Saroori by 643 votes. It was a quadrangular contest on this seat as well. Sharma polled 14,195 votes, followed by Saroori (13,552), Congress’ Mohammad Zafarullah (12,533) and BJP’s Tariq Hussain Keen (9,550).
Sajad Gani Lone barely managed to retain his family stronghold of Handwara by a margin of 662 votes.
