17 seats in crucial Ladakh election won by Congress-National Conference coalition

In the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC)-Kargil elections, the National Conference and Congress jointly won 17 seats, passing the halfway point. Results for 20 of the 26 seats up for election on October 4 have been announced, with the vote count still ongoing.

The four voting members of the 30-member Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC)-Kargil are proposed by the administration.

This election is significant since it is the first important vote after Article 370 was repealed on August 5, 2019, and the Ladakh Union territory was established.

According to officials, the National Conference (NC) got nine seats, while its ally, the Congress, gained eight. Two seats were won by the BJP, and one seat was won by an Independent. In the majority of the 26 seats, there was a triangle race between the NC, Congress, and BJP.

The Jammu and Kashmir National Conference’s vice president celebrated the victory and thanked the electorate on social media. Abdullah wrote a ‘Thank you’ in the description of his post on X (previously Twitter) hours after the result was announced, along with images of the victory celebrations.

The election saw a 77.61 percent voter turnout, with 74,026 of the 95,388 eligible voters exercising their right to vote.

On October 1, the previous council, presided over by Feroz Ahmad Khan of the NC, finished its five-year term. Before October 11, the newly elected council members will take office.

Despite having a pre-election agreement, the NC and Congress each fielded 17 and 22 candidates, respectively. Both parties made it clear that the agreement only applied to regions where they had to contend with the BJP’s aggressive opposition.

The BJP ran 17 candidates this time around, up from the one seat it had won in the previous election and eventually increased to three by adding two PDP council members. 25 Independent candidates competed alongside the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which ran for four seats.

In addition, 278 polling places around the district used electronic voting machines for the first time in council elections during this election.