J-K Election: Sajad Lone Loses Kupwara Seat Against PDP Candidate By A Margin Of Over 9,000 Votes

Sajad Lone is a former separatist from north Kashmir who joined politics by fighting parliamentary elections in 2009 and started his political party.

People's Conference chief and party candidate Sajad Lone.

Source : PTI

Jammu and Kashmir People's Conference (JKPC) president Sajad Lone lost the Kupwara constituency with a margin of 9,797 votes against Fayaz Mir of the Peoples Democratic Party.

While Lone got 7,457 votes, Fayaz received 27,773 votes and the National Conference candidate got 17,976 votes.

Lone was pitted against National Conference's senior leader Nasir Aslam Wani, the grandson of former minister, the late Ghulam Nabi Sogami, and a confidant of NC chief Omar Abdullah. The other contenders for the seat were Fayaz Mir of PDP and Peerzada Firdous of Awami Ittehad Party.

The seat with around 100,000 voters went to polls in the last phase of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections on October 1 and saw a turnout of 64.25%.

Lone is a former separatist from north Kashmir who joined politics by fighting parliamentary elections in 2009 and started his political party. In 2014, he was a minister in the then Mehbooba Mufti-led government from the BJP's quota. He hit out at the BJP in his poll rallies this time as INDIA bloc parties labelled him and other parties outside the alliance as proxies of the BJP.

Kupwara Assembly Elections 2014

During the 2014 polls, Lone's party colleague Bashir Ahmad Dar defeated PDP's Mir Mohd Fayaz by a mere 151 votes. 

Lone won the Handwara seat in the assembly elections held in 2014 by defeating National Conference candidate Chowdhary Mohammad Ramzan by a margin of over 5,000 votes. Lone's father, late Abdul Gani Lone, had won the seat thrice in 1967, 1972 and 1977.

In the recent Lok Sabha polls, both Sajjad Lone and National Conference's vice-president Omar Abdullah lost from Baramulla-Kupwara seat to Sheikh Abdul Rashid, popularly known as Engineer Rashid.

The last Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections were held in 2014. In these elections, any of the major parties failed to bag a full majority. While the Mehbooba Mufti-led PDP bagged 28 seats, the BJP was the second-largest party in the state with 25 seats.

The halfway mark in the Jammu and Kashmir assembly is at 46 seats. Since neither the PDP nor the BJP could get a simple majority, the two parties entered a coalition and the government lasted till June 19, 2018.

The state government collapsed on June 19, 2018, as the BJP withdrew its support citing a lack of alignment with the PDP on critical issues, including the handling of militancy. Jammu and Kashmir came under the Governor's rule, followed by the abrogation of Article 370 and the bifurcation of the state into two union territories - Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.