Kunal Srivatsa
Jammu, May 6 : Ladakh parliamentary constituency, polling for which will be held tomorrow along with other 63 Lok Sabha seats spread across the country, is all set to witness an interesting finish to the electoral battle once again as this seat from 1999-General Elections onwards has seen close contests. And, this time around the fight could be more challenging given the fact that the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) has made a strong emergence in world's highest battle field, add to it the factors like the presence of two strong independent candidates in the fray and a total disintegration of the Congress-National Conference alliance. In such a scenario, the Ladakh parliamentary constituency which has the history of narrow victories and close contests, it would be another battle where a stage is all set for a photo-finish.
If stiff competitions are an aspect associated with the Ladakh Lok Sabha seat since the General Elections of 1999, the high voting percentage has also remained a phenomenon in the last three Lok Sabha polls. One more interesting feature connected to this seat is that in every election since 1999, the winner never got repeated in the subsequent polls and the candidates having different party affiliations emerged victorious. In the Lok Sabha polls of 1999, while the overall voter turnout in this constituency stood at 81.88 percent, the National Conference (NC) bagged the seat when its candidate Hassan Khan defeated his nearest rival Thupstan Chhewang of Congress with a wafer thin margin of 2090 votes. Khan obtained 52,187 votes while the Congress nominee Chhewang got 50,097 votes out of the total 1, 17, 671 votes polled. However, in the next elections of 2004, Thupstan Chhewang, who had parted ways with Congress and contested the polls as an independent avenged his defeat when he wrested the seat from NC's Hassan Khan by a margin of 25,713 votes. Chhewang had 66,839 votes in his kitty while Khan could only muster 41,126 votes from the total 1, 28, 931 ballots polled at a healthy percentage of 73.52. In 2009-Lok Sabha polls, for a second time no recognized national or state party was able to win the seat since again an independent romped home from this seat. Hassan Khan, who fought as an independent candidate in 2009- Lok Sabha polls beat Congress nominee Phuntsog Namgyal by a close margin of 3684 votes. While Khan got 32,701 votes his nearest rival Namgyal polled 29,017 ballots from the total 1,09, 434 votes polled. The percentage of voter turnout stood at 71.86.
Now, with Lok Sabha polls-2014 heading for the finishing line tomorrow, the fate of four contesting candidates will be sealed by 1,59,631 voters, who would exercise their voting rights at 531 polling stations spread across four assembly segments of Nobra & Leh assembly constituencies in Leh district and Kargil & Zanskar assembly constituencies in Kargil district. The four contesting candidates in Ladakh including Tsering Samphel of Congress, Thupstan Chhewang of BJP and two independent candidates Ghulam Raza, a Congress rebel and Sayed Mohammad Kazim Sabri, who are backed by two powerful religious bodies including Imam Khomeini Memorial Trust and Islamiya School Kargil respectively, would keep their fingers crossed till the day of election results on May 16. |
