LS polls: Interesting contest awaits in J-K's Anantnag-Rajouri with INDIA bloc partners pitted against each other

Anantnag-Rajouri (Jammu and Kashmir) [India], May 24 : As the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir (J-K) concludes voting Anantnag-Rajouri parliamentary constituency going to polls in the sixth phase of the ongoing Lok Sabha elections on Saturday, May 25, an interesting contest awaits with two INDIA bloc partners in the fray to win this high-profile seat.
Earlier, the Election Commission had revised the date of polling in the constituency from May 7 to May 25 after it received representations to reschedule the date of polling due to various issues about "logistics, communication and natural barrier of connectivity."
People's Democratic Party (PDP) chief and former Jammu and Kashmir (J-K) Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti will be facing a high-stake contest against National Conference (NC) candidate Mian Altaf Ahmad. Additionally, Zafar Iqbal Manhas of the Apni Party is also contesting the polls, making the contest a triangular fight.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has however not announced any candidate from any of the three seats in Kashmir, including Anantnag-Rajouri.
Despite NC and PDP, both being part of the INDIA bloc, the former named its candidate from Anantnag-Rajouri, even though Mufti wanted to contest the seat as an INDIA bloc candidate. The Congress also announced support for the NC candidate.
In 2019, NC's Hasnain Masoodi defeated Mufti from the seat by a close margin of over 6000 votes. This makes it a high-stake battle this time as the former J-K CM Mufti would be aiming to wrest the seat, which was once deemed a PDP bastion.
Mufti had earlier won the seat in 2004 and 2014. Her late father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed also won the seat in 1998.
Recently, Mehbooba Mufti hit out at the central government and said that "atrocities" committed since 2019 are no longer "acceptable" adding that the people will give the befitted answer to them via vote.
"In the first and the second phases of the polling, people voted in huge numbers. I am hopeful that people in South Kashmir will vote in even bigger numbers than North Kashmir. People want to give a message to the government in Delhi that the atrocities committed since 2019 are no longer acceptable and they will answer to it via vote," Mufti told reporters.
Prior to this, she appealed to the Kashmiri Pandit community to vote for her in the Lok Sabha elections, affirming that she had an idea about the 'trauma' Kashmiri Pandit community had to face in the early 1990 insurgency that led to their mass exodus from the valley.
"I understand your pain. I have an idea of how older people might feel when they miss Kashmir. The beginning of the pain was from our house. We also have faced a lot. My father thought that the relationship between majority and minority must be maintained. This is the reason he made a lot of effort when he became the CM. I was raised in Kashmiri Pandits' homes. I understand how important it is for all of us to live together," Mufti said at a public meeting with members of Kashmiri Pandits community.
"I know the trauma of Kashmiri Pandits, as they want to come back to their homeland. Mufti Sahab was very saddened by what happened to Kashmiri pandits," she added.
In the first general elections in Jammu and Kashmir since the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019, the voting has already concluded on the seats of Jammu, Baramulla, Srinagar and Udhampur.
This is also the first election in Anantnag-Rajouri after the delimitation exercise in 2022, which saw the region of Poonch and Rajouri being combined into the constituency.
In the fifth phase, the Baramulla parliamentary constituency of Jammu and Kashmir recorded a voter turnout of 55.79 per cent. As per the ECI, this is the highest voter turnout recorded in the constituency in the last 8 Lok Sabha elections in 35 years.
Prior to this, the Srinagar constituency also recorded its highest voter turnout since 199 with over 38 per cent.
In April, PM Modi made his first visit to J-K since the abrogation of Article 370. During his address in Udhampur, the Prime Minister said the day isn't far when full statehood will be restored to Jammu and Kashmir and assembly elections will be held.
Underscoring the 'change' that has come to the erstwhile state, PM Modi said for the first time, that terrorism and cross-border infiltration wouldn't be poll issues going into an election in Jammu and Kashmir.
In the 2019 elections, the BJP won three seats while the National Conference won the remaining three. After the abrogation of Article 370, the Ladakh constituency is under a separate UT which will also undergo polling tomorrow.