Elections for the Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha constituency will be held on May 7, 2024– Phase 3 of Lok Sabha polls– while votes will be counted on June 4 and results declared on the same day.
Jammu And Kashmir Lok Sabha Elections 2024: The Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha constituency is one of the five Lok Sabha constituencies in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The Anantnag-Rajouri seat has traditionally been a swing constituency between regional rivals-turned-allies People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the National Conference (NC).
Over the years, the PDP and the NC have fought pitched poll battles from the Anantnag-Rajouri seat with former Chief Minister and PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti winning the seat twice in 2004 and 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Elections for the Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha constituency will be held on May 7, 2024– Phase 3 of Lok Sabha polls– while votes will be counted on June 4 and results declared on the same day.
Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha Election 2024: Key Candidates
Zaffar Iqbal Manhas – Apni Party
(Note: The candidate(s) list will be updated as and when they are announced.)
Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha Election 2024: Key Dates
Date of polling: May 7, 2024
Date of counting/results: June 4, 2024
About Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha Constituency
In the 2019 polls, NC once again regained the Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha seat when Hasnain Masoodi, a former judge of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, defeated Mehbooba Mufti and J&K Congress chief Ghulam Ahmad Mir by a margin 6,676 votes.
Amid a thin voter turnout of 13.68 percent, Masoodi secured 40,180 votes, while Mir and Mufti received 33,504 and 30, 524 votes, respectively.
However, this time all three parties have aligned under the banner of the opposition INDIA alliance to fight the BJP juggernaut in the 2024 polls. This could mean that they will field a single candidate from the Anantnag-Rajouri if a seat-sharing deal is inked.
But, this scenario seems unlikely as BJP has never been much of a threat in Anantnag, thus all three– Congress, NC, and PDP– are likely to go solo and the constituency will probably will witness a triangular poll battle akin to previous elections.
However, there’s another catch as former PDP minister Altaf Bukhari’s newly floated ‘Apni Party’ has fielded renowned Pahari social activist and poet Zaffar Iqbal Manhas from the Anantnag parliamentary seat. This could possibly throw a wrench in the INDIA bloc’s plans to retain the seat.
Elections for the five Lok Sabha seats in Jammu and Kashmir will be held in the first five phases of the seven-phased Lok Sabha Elections 2024. Udhampur will be the first to go to polls in Phase 1 on April 19, followed by the Jammu Lok Sabha constituency on April 26 (Phase 2), Anantnag-Rajouri on May 7 (Phase 3), Srinagar on May 13 (Phase 4), while Baramulla will go to polls in Phase 5 on May 20.
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