Peoples Conference Chairman and MLA Sajad Gani Lone on Saturday accused the ruling National Conference (NC) of gifting 7 MLAs to BJP in the Rajya Sabha polls held yesterday.

In the RS polls, NC won three seats while BJP won one seat and got four more seats than the party’s tally of 28 votes while three votes were invalidated.
“These two or three extra votes had no room for that candidate number four,” Lone said while addressing a press conference
“Even if there had been no cross-voting, that candidate would still have lost. All the cross-voting was done by the National Conference. They did it themselves,” he said.
He claimed seven NC members “directly gifted their votes to the BJP.”
“It was a fixed match. This is the same party that accused others of being with the BJP. And today, they are sitting in BJP’s lap,” he said.
Lone said the NC’s actions have exposed its claims of being an opposition force.
“Our people must open their eyes and see how they were deceived. Even if BJP is not in power directly, their preferred party is ruling now,” he said.
Criticising NC vice president Omar Abdullah, Lone said the Congress was deliberately denied a winnable Rajya Sabha seat. “They offered Congress a losing seat, number four. Omar Abdullah was asking, ‘Why don’t they contest for number four?’ They wanted it this way”.
Lone noted that Congress, as a national party, should have been given priority. “A national party carries a different weight on the national stage. Regional parties do not”.
He further accused NC’s past Rajya Sabha members of failing to deliver in Delhi.
“None of them brought anything substantial back. They only went there to get small personal favors,” Lone said.
Calling the NC’s political approach “submissive before Delhi,” Lone said, “For seventy years, this has been the story. They go to Delhi saying ‘beat us but let us weep.’ They ask Delhi to tighten the stick while pretending to resist here.”
On the abrogation of Article 370, Lone alleged that “midnight meetings” between Delhi and NC leaders before August 5, 2019, were full of “betrayal after betrayal.”
He urged the people of Jammu and Kashmir to “wake up” and recognize what he described as “a long-standing political deception.”