As BJP gets in celebratory made after their best outing in the Jammu and Kashmir assembly polls, Ravinder Raina, who has led the Jammu and Kashmir BJP since 2018, has lost his seat. Raina, who served as a member of the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly from 2014 to 2018, saw a personal setback, losing his Nowshera seat to National Conference (NC) candidate Surinder Choudhary by 7,819 votes. Choudhary secured 35,069 votes, while Raina received 27,250, according to Election Commission of India (ECI) data.
After the loss, Raina accepted the verdict, stating in a post on X (formerly Twitter): "With all respect, I accept the people's verdict in Nowshera." He expressed gratitude to the people of Jammu & Kashmir, particularly the Jammu region, for supporting the BJP, which won a record 29 assembly seats, an all-time high for the party in the state.
"Unfortunately, we lost the Nowshera Assembly Constituency. However, the Bharatiya Janata Party is humbled by the overwhelming victory in the Assembly elections and has secured the highest vote share in J&K," Raina added.
The first assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir in 10 years, and the first since the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, saw the overall voter turnout across the three phases of J&K polls was 63.45%, with 61% in the first phase, 57.3% in the second, and 68.72% in the third.