Amir Tantray
Jammu, Jun 4: The first ever elections for Ghulam Nabi Azad’s Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) has proved disastrous as his party has lost from all the three seats it contested and even lost the security deposit all over.
Even before the take off, the DPAP crash landed in its own backyard.
Azad’s most trusted and close aide Ghulam Muhammad Saroori has lost badly from Udhampur parliamentary constituency.
As per the data provided by the election commission of India (ECI), the DPAP candidate has only been able to get over 40,000 votes from over 11 lakh votes polled for the Udhampur Lok Sabha constituency. Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate Dr. Jitendra Singh won with a thumping majority of over 1.24 lakh votes whereas Congress candidate Choudhary Lal Singh remained runners up.
Udhampur Lok Sabha seat is the home seat of former union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, who left Congress party in 2022 due to differences with Rahul Gandhi, and he hasn’t been able to get votes from his native district for his party’s candidate. Azad had unsuccessfully contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Udhampur seat on Congress mandate.
Saroori even lost in the Inderwal Assembly segment of Kishtwar district from where he had won three consecutive Assembly elections. This time Saroori has remained at the third place in Inderwal with Choudhary Lal Singh getting highest votes followed by Dr. Jitendra Singh.
Since the beginning of Lok Sabha elections, DPAP got the tag of playing as B-team of the ruling BJP and opposition parties like Congress and National Conference (NC) alleged Azad of fielding candidates from Udhampur to cut secular votes which either would have gone to Congress candidates.
With the final result it has been observed that DPAP has been able to give the Congress party a dent by securing over 39,000 votes. Though the winning margin between BJP and Congress has remained over 1.24 lakh votes, these 39,000 votes would have meant nothing for Congress party in achieving the target but these votes would have certainly brought the margin below one lakh votes.
DPAP contested three out of five Lok Sabha seats of Jammu and Kashmir which included Udhampur, Anantnag-Rajouri and Srinagar.
There is nothing much for DPAP candidates of Anantnag-Rajouri and Srinagar seat Muhammad Saleem Paray and Amir Ahmed Bhat, respectively, to celebrate as both of them have also lost the security deposit. Paray grabbed 25440 votes whereas Bhat got 15104 votes only.
