In a keenly fought contest for six seats to J&K Legislative Council (LC), the National Conference-Congress coalition on Wednesday won its all five seats, the main Opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) too clinched one seat.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), though, had loss of face. The voting patterns showed that BJP MLAs, defying the party whip, voted for both the Congress and National Conference candidates viz., Yashpal Khajuria and Master Noor Hussain, respectively, in two Jammu seats, thus helping the coalition win hands down.
However, the BJP’s own candidate Thakur Ranjit Singh in Jammu seat could secure only four votes even out of the party’s 11 votes.
Presumably, one BJP MLA voted for People’s Democratic Party candidate also in election to three LC seats for Kashmir region. This happened while the five-member BJP parliamentarians’ study group led by the party’s former national president Rajnath Singh was on a four-day state visit.
The reaction of former BJP state president and party’s chief whip Ashok Khajuria to this open-and-shut case of horse-trading by the party MLAs was, “Mere whip ki dhajjiyan udaayi gayi hain (My whip has been brazenly defied). This is the betrayal with the people who gave their mandate to the candidates representing nationalist forces against militants and secessionist forces. The party has taken a serious note of this contemptible act. I’ve talked to senior BJP leader at the Centre Arun Jaitley in this connection. The central high command too has taken a serious note of it. The guilty have been identified.”