The just concluded J&K Assembly polls will be written in golden letters in the annals of the history of the elections in this part of India. The UT elections of 2024 were different from all other Assembly elections held so far in many ways. It was the first poll after the assembly elections of 2014 and also the first poll after the abrogation of controversial Article 370 and downsizing and bifurcation of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir into two UT’s of Jammu &Kashmir and Ladakh. This Assembly poll was held in a terror free, peaceful environment and in the backdrop of no stone pelting, calls for the boycott of the elections were totally absent and it was the most free and fair election.
The people of Jammu and Kashmir participated in the 2024 Assembly elections overwhelmingly and enthusiastically. There were long queues of voters in front of the polling stations in all the three phases of the crucial and historical polls. There was witnessed unprecedented voter turnout in all the three phases of the polls. The voter turnout together in all three phases of the Assembly polls was 63.45%.The voter turnout was 65.65 % in third phase. In the first phase of polls , there was a voter turnout of 61.38% and in the second phase on 25 September the voter percentage was 57% and all this shows that people of Jammu and Kashmir voted in an unprecedented way .This shows the people’s trust and faith in democracy .The election results indicated that democracy has once again triumphed and it is a matter of pride and satisfaction for the ECI, government ,political parties and public at large.
But the election results on October 1, 2024 showed that in this election, there was intense and acute polarization in both regions or divisions of the UT, that is the people of Jammu by and large voted in favor of BJP and as against this the voters of Kashmir region voted en-masse in favor of National Conference. Thus there was sharp divide seen in the voting in the two divisions. It can be said that the people of Jammu voted more or less in favor of the Saffron party of BJP and the Kashmiris in the valley voted in favor of JKNC unprecendently.
Thus it can be opined that there was saffron surge in Jammu region baring some places of Pirpanchal and in Kashmir region, there was red surge everywhere from cities to villages. In Kashmir people voted in favor of Plough of the National Conference.NC got 37 Assembly seats from its stronghold of Kashmir as Kashmiri Muslims voted in favor of NC in huge numbers and this can be described as the red revolution. There was red ,red everywhere as its party flag is red with a white plough. So the people of Kashmir have voted in favor of the mainstream and traditional party NC .
It has come to fore that NC poll campaigners created some sort of suspicion and fear among the voters that if BJP wins, there will be bulldozer Raj in Kashmir and the people will have to suffer. The peace, change, normalcy and development narrative of BJP paled into insignificance before the false narrative created and sustained by the activists of NC and the party which boasts that NC is not a political party only but a movement has been successful in extracting major chunk of the votes of the Kashmir region. The Jammu region by and large rallied behind the nationalistic and development politics and policies of the BJP and voted in very large numbers in favor of the saffron party .For the first time in the electoral history of Jammu and Kashmir, BJP got an emphatic win in Jammu region as it crossed all its previous records and won 29 assembly seats all from Jammu region .So there was saffron surge in Jammu division as the lotus bloomed in Jammu .Despite sincere efforts and campaigning by BJP across Kashmir valley and despite unprecedented development ,change and peace and largest tourist footfall and spending of huge amounts of money on development projects ,BJP failed to open its score in valley as it did not won a single seat from Kashmir region. Thus there was sharp divide and polarization in the two regions of the UT, where Jammu voted by and large in favor of BJP. But in Kashmir region in contrast to Jammu, Kashmir region voted en masse for JKNC and thus there was red surge everywhere across Kashmir.
Communal voting is proscribed and prohibited in India as per the constitution. But the just concluded assembly poll results showed that the people of the two regions of Jammu and Kashmir have voted on communal and religious lines. The Muslim majority belt of Kashmir has voted in favor of NC ,while the Hindu majority belt of Jammu region has baked BJP and voted in its favor and gave the BJP record 29 assembly seats for the first time .So there is no exaggeration in saying that the two regions namely Jammu as well as Kashmir voted on religious lines ,Jammu rallied behind BJP and Kashmir rallied behind NC. We claim that democracy has triumphed in Jammu and Kashmir as people have once again shown trust and faith in democracy. It is all right but the glaring and striking fact is that there was sharp polarization in the two regions of the UT and the voters of Jammu and Kashmir both voted on religious bases and it does not augur well for out democracy, secularism and pluralism and the country. Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections reveal deep political divides ,with NC dominating Kashmir and BJP thriving in Jammu ,reflecting religious and regional divide and preferences.
An array of jagged mountain ranges and a state-of –the-art tunnel are not the only barriers between the two regions that make up India’s most restive region and its newest Union Territory .As the results of the assembly polls showed Jammu and Kashmir are also separated by their political preferences ,which tracked closely with dominant faiths in these regions. The 2024 polls threw up among the most polarized results in J&K –with both the NC and BJP posting their best –ever results in the region .NC won 35 of the 47 seats in Kashmir and emerged as the single largest party in the valley The BJP won 29 out of 43 seats in Jammu, similarly emerging as the party in the Hindu –majority region. The roots of these differences are contested and longstanding. The region of Jammu subsumes within itself 10 districts ,out of which only four are Hindu majority while other six –these are more sparsely populated ,to be sure –are Muslim majority. Bitterness between the two main regions is old but has mounted over allegations of eroding Hindu majority and an economic downturn reflected in a lack of job opportunities for young people.
Allegations of favouritism to Kashmir are a common trigger for the grouse. All this was in play to determine the stark difference in campaign narratives this election season. In Kashmir, the discourse revolved around deeply ideological questions of restoration of statehood and restoration of Article 370—two things promised by both major parties in the valley, the NC and PDP. The real issues concerning to roads, health, school and the like played second fiddle. In Jammu, which is far more integrated with India, the question of Article 370’s abrogation evoked a very different response , there was no question of its restoration even among people who argued that it had not benefitted them to the extent imagined. Pakistan and cross –border terrorism was a constant presence was ironically absent in Kashmir in these polls because the militants had shifted their focus to several areas of Jammu region and thus it was an issue in polls in Jammu region. To conclude it boils down to the fact that polarization and that too deep was revealed by the election results and there is saffron surge in Jammu and red surge in Kashmir.

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