Amir Tantray/Yogesh
Jammu, Jun 4: For the third consecutive time, people of Jammu region have reposed faith in Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) by giving thumping victory in both Jammu and Udhampur parliamentary constituencies.
While Jammu has elected Jugal Kishore Sharma for the third consecutive term as Member Parliament (MP), Udhampur has sided with the union minister of state Dr. Jitendra Singh to represent them at the highest seat of governance.
The saffron wave has swept Hindu-dominated Jammu region despite the fact that anti-incumbency was in place and both the BJP candidates had to reach from pillar to post to convince people to vote in their favour.
As per the data available with election commission of India website, Jugal Kishore Sharma won the Jammu Lok Sabha seat with a margin of 135498 votes as he got a total of 687588 votes. His nearest and only strong competitor, Congress party’s stalwart Raman Bhalla was able to get 552090 votes. On Udhampur seat, Dr. Jitendra Singh defeated his arch rival and Congress candidate Choudhary Lal Singh with a margin of 124373 votes. The union MoS in PMO got a total of 571076 votes whereas Congress candidates got 446703 votes.
Talking to the mediapersons Dr. Jitendra Singh said, “This is victory of people to see Narendra Modi as Prime Minister for the third term. People of Udhampur seat are lucky enough as they have become part of transformation and contributed to elect the Prime Minister. This constituency is very important and I pray to god to give me wisdom so that development works continue like it was taken up earlier.”
Udhampur Lok Sabha seat went for polls during the first phase on April 19 and 1113727 votes out of over 16.23 lakh votes whereas Jammu seat went for polls during the second phase on April 26 and 1302176 votes were polled out of over 17.80 lakh votes.
“We contested the elections in the first phase, for which I got just 20 days and all the equations were against us. Despite that people showered their blessings and I managed to get 4.46 lakh votes which shows the resentment of youth and poor against the present government. I am 100% sure the first time voters and the educated class voted against the current regime,” Choudhary Lal Singh said and accepted his defeat.
Out of the 18 assembly segments of Udhampur Lok Sabha constituency, Jitendra managed to get leads in 13 segments whereas Lal Singh only managed to get leads in five segments and that too of Chenab valley. The Congress candidate couldn’t perform well in his own bastion of Kathua district whereas the neutral Udhampur district stood behind BJP like in 2019 and 2014.
Both Dr Jitendra Singh and Jugal Kishore Sharma have made a hat-trick of victories and have given an important two seats to BJP to get a chance to form government at the center.
Post abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, this was the first general election being held in J&K and Jammu seems to be happy with what the BJP has done.
The victory of BJP on both the seats of Jammu region is certainly going to boost the confidence of the saffron party as in a few months from now the election commission of India is expected to hold Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir.
Jammu and Kashmir in this election recorded its highest poll participation in the last 35 years. The Combined Voter Turnout at the polling stations for the entire Union Territory was 58.46 per cent.
Meanwhile, in Ladakh Parliamentary constituency, Independent candidate Haji Haneefa Jan secured 65259 votes while Congress party’s Tsering Namgyal bagged 37,397 votes while BJP’s Tashi Gyalson got 31,956 votes. Official figures suggested that Haji won with a margin of 27,862 votes.
