Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial nominee Narendra Modi’s victory by the highest margin of 5,70,128 votes from Vadodara in Gujarat has an interesting contrast in Ladakh, the highest constituency where the party’s candidate, 66-year-old Thupstan Chhewang, was returned with the lowest margin of 36 votes on Friday.
Comprising the Buddhist-dominated Leh district and Muslim-dominated Kargil, Ladakh has one of the thinnest electorates in India with just 1,60,361 voters. With an impressive turnout of 73 per cent, it witnessed a four-cornered contest on May 7 with voters polarised on religious lines.
Congress candidate Tsering Samphel, a Leh-based Buddhist, faced dissidence in Kargil as the influential Shia seat of Imam Khomeini Memorial Trust (IKMT) broke away from the party and fielded its own candidate, Ghulam Raza, as an independent. The National Conference-backed Islamia School of Kargil (ISK) fielded another independent Aga Syed Mohammad Kazim Sabri. The NC-Congress alliance thus had three candidates against the BJP’s one.
Congress sources insist that the party’s senior leader and Cabinet minister Rigzin Jora was confident that Mr. Samphel would win with a huge margin against the BJP nominee. But with the Muslim votes split, it became a neck and neck contest between Mr. Raza (31,075 votes) and Mr. Chhewang (31,111); the BJP candidate squeaked through.
While Mr Sabri secured 28,234 votes, Mr Samphel stood at the tail-end with 26,402.
However, Mr. Raza is now drafting an election petition as he claims that his caveat on the 836 postal ballots was dismissed by the Returning Officer “arbitrarily”.
According to him, many of the postal voters figured simultaneously in the general electoral rolls and they cast two votes each. His complaint went to the Chief Election Commissioner, the Chief Electoral Officer and the Returning Officer six days ahead of the polling.
“But it was an unfounded complaint which was duly rejected by the Returning Officer”, Mr. Chhewang told The Hindu . Even in Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP’s winning scores were colossal as its candidate Jugal Kishore won the Jammu seat with a margin of 2,57,280 votes and Jitendra Singh defeated the Congress stalwart Ghulam Nabi Azad in Udhampur with an impressive margin of 60,967.
