BJP likely to face rough weather in LC polls

Flash-back of 2015 Rajya Sabha elections in offing

R.S. Gill

Jammu Tawi, April 11: With four nominees already elected unopposed to J&K Legislative Council in biennial polls, the results of two seats of Jammu Province for which the polling is scheduled for April 17 is an open secret now. The event is likely to end in a repeat episode of 2015 Rajya Sabha Election in J&K.

The contest on April 17 will be for two seats of the Legislative Council of Jammu Province between three candidates in fray – Abdul Qayoom Dar of the PDP, Vikram Randhawa of the BJP and Thakur Balbir Singh of the Congress.

The party position of votes in the present house strength of 89 seats is PDP 28, BJP 25, NC 15, Congress 12, CPM 1, PDF 1, Independents 5 (out of these, two members of Peoples' Conference are allied with BJP and one independent with PDP and remaining two are Pawan Gupta and Sheikh Abdul Rashid) and two women nominated MLAs one each of BJP and PDP.

Arithmetic shows that the coalition partners have 58 votes in the house to elect their two candidates while NC and Congress jointly have 27 votes for one candidate. The votes of CPM, PDF and two independent are crucial and decisive and minimum quota of 30 votes is required to win each seat through the Single Transferable Vote (STV) System (Formula given at end of this report for our readers).

Abdul Qayoom Dar of the PDP is likely to sail smoothly as the coalition partners have to transfer 30 first preferential votes to him being the cut off and only 28 first preferences to Vikram Randhawa of BJP. BJP point-man Ram Madhav who was in Jammu for mustering support to cobble up the numbers required for reaching magic figure solely relying on an old trick of persuading Pawan Gupta, an Independent with BJP background and some possible assurance from PDP of using its good office among other three crucial MLAs from Kashmir.

This trick was earlier tried by the BJP during the Rajya Sabha elections in 2015 that proved a damp squib despite Pawan Gupta obliging his parent party by voting for BJP candidate Mr. Chander Mohan Sharma. But the BJP high command again went dormant for opening channel with Gupta under pressure of a faction in the party nursing animosity with him. The factional bitterness may force Gupta to abstain this time.

Going by the performance and synergy shown by CPIM, PDF and Independent Sheikh Abdul Rashid with NC-Congress combine and the current situation in the valley, there is all likelihood that MY Tarigami, Hakim Yaseen and Sheikh Rashid will side with the Congress candidate Thakur Balbir Singh to defeat BJP nominee Vikram Randhawa.

BJP had already secured unopposed the lone seat for Poonch/Rajouri in Jammu province for its candidate Pradeep Sharma and  three seats of Kashmir equally shared one each by Girdhari Lal Raina (BJP), Yashir Rishi (PDP) and Aga Syed Mehmood (NC) who have been elected unopposed on April 3.

The Election process for the legislative council follows a system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote (STV).

The completed ballot paper therefore contains the candidates in the order of preference as marked by the voter.

In an STV election, a candidate requires a minimum number of first preference votes (or quota) to be elected. The quota for a single seat to be filled is determined as follows:

• Number of votes cast divided by number of seats plus one to denominator.
• Add one to the whole number so arrived and ignore the fractions, if any.
• The resulting number is the minimum number (quota) of first preference votes required to be elected.

If none of the candidates get the required quota of first preference votes, then a process of vote transfer takes place, successively eliminating those who get the least number of first preferential votes.