EXCLUSIVE | ‘Repeat of 2009’: NC’s Ladakh leaders make ‘silent’ comeback, rejoin party after resignation row

Jammu: It’s now official: the National Conference staged a “dramatic exit” from its alliance with Congress to “ditch” the latter in Ladakh during the Lok Sabha elections in April-May this year. All NC leaders who resigned in protest over allocating the region’s sole parliamentary seat to Congress have returned to the party without any conditions.
This was evident when senior leaders of the party from Ladakh, including the newly-elected Member of Parliament, Mohmad Hanifa Jan, former minister Qamar Ali Akhoon, Chief Executive Councillor, LAHDC Kargil, Mohd Jaffer Akhoon and district secretary Kargil NC Zakir Hussain attended the oath-ceremony of the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah at SKICC Srinagar, having been invited by party leadership.
With the return of these leaders, including Haji Hanifa Jan, the NC’s strength in Lok Sabha has increased to three members—two from J&K and one from Ladakh.
“We returned to the party fold before the Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir. It was already decided and there was no condition for the same…..Our strength in Lok Sabha has gone up to three. We attended the oath-ceremony of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, but we have yet to make a formal announcement about our return,” Qamar Ali Akhoon confirmed The News Now.
On May 6 this year, NC’s Ladakh unit announced mass resignations to protest the “pressure being built on them (NC leaders in Kargil) to support Congress party’s candidate, T Namgyal for the lone Ladakh Lok Sabha seat. Thereafter, the NC with the support of all political parties, including Congress but minus BJP, fielded its former Chief Executive Councillor (CEC) LAHDC Kargil and party’s district president Kargil Haji Hanifa Jan as the joint candidate for the lone Ladakh parliamentary constituency.
This situation echoes a similar incident from 2009, when rebel NC candidate Ghulam Hassan Khan defeated the official candidate of the NC-Congress alliance, P. Namgyal, and later joined the Congress-led UPA-II.
Khan, a prominent NC leader, rebelled and entered the electoral race for the Ladakh seat. At that time, Khan received support from the Kargil unit of the NC and backing from influential religious bodies like the Islamia School and Imam Khomeini Trust. Khan won the seat as an Independent and later pledged unconditional support to the UPA at the request of NC President Dr. Farooq Abdullah.
It may be placed here that Haneefa Jan defeated his closest rival, Tsering Namgyal of Congress by a substantial margin of 27,906 votes in the recently-concluded Lok Sabha polls, wresting the lone parliamentary seat from the BJP, which it had won in the last two successive general elections in 2014 and 2019.
Tashi Gyalson, the BJP candidate finished third in the triangular electoral race in the arid region. The winner secured 48.15 percent votes, while the runner-up from the Congress party polled 27.59 percent votes. The BJP candidate secured just 23.58 percent votes. There were a total of 1,84, 808 electors on the seat out of which 1,32,727 voters exercised their right to franchise.
The victory of Haneefa Jan was on expected lines as all candidates from Shia Muslim-dominated Kargil district, who filed their nominations for the seat, withdrew their candidatures in his support “to ensure the representation of neglected Kargil district in the parliament”. He was the fourth independent to win the seat since it was constituted in 1967. The seat was won by Independents in 1989, 2004 and 2009 general elections.

Updated On 10/21/2024 12:47:30 AM

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