J&K Basholi Election Result: The Election Commission of India (EC) has on October 8 declared that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Darshan Kumar (48) has defeated Congress opponent Choudhary Lal Singh (66) in Jammu's Basholi seat.
Kumar won by a margin of 16,034 votes, getting a total of 31,874 votes, compared to Singh's 15,840 votes.
Basholi is part of Kathua district in Jammu and Kashmir, PTI reported. This is the first result of the day declared by the EC in the 2024 Assembly Elections in J&K.
Basholi Assembly constituency has been in focus as three-time MLA and two-time MP Choudhary Lal Singh faced a herculean task to reclaim his traditional stronghold for the fourth time. The Congress has won it seven times overall.
And although Singh was in a four-way contest with BJP’s Darshan Kumar, PDP’s Yoginder Singh, and BSP’s Pankaj Kumar, the real battle was expected to be between the BJP and the Congress.
Lal Singh has lost three consecutive Lok Sabha elections to Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh in 2014, 2019, and 2024. During the last Lok Sabha election, the Union minister secured a lead of 14,000 votes on the Basholi segment, leaving Lal Singh with an uphill task to retain the seat, which he won in 2014.
Lal Singh started his political career as a student leader and was first elected as an MLA from Basholi in 1996. He was re-elected in 2002 and became the minister for health and medical education in the Congress-PDP coalition government. He later won the Udhampur seat in the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
An arts graduate from the Jammu University, Lal Singh rejoined the Congress in March this year before the Lok Sabha elections, after leaving the BJP in 2018 over the Kathua rape case.
After parting ways with the BJP in 2018, he launched a movement for the “Dogra pride,” advocating for a public holiday on Maharaja Hari Singh’s birth anniversary and a separate state for Jammu.
He also faces a money laundering case by the Enforcement Directorate and was briefly arrested.
Kumar, who is currently the district president, also belongs to the Rajput community. Basholi’s 60 per cent Thakur community plays a crucial role in deciding the outcome, which is why both the Congress and the BJP have fielded Rajput candidates.
Kumar intensified his campaign with door-to-door outreach, corner meetings, and public rallies. The BJP has brought in star campaigners, including Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, and Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari, G Kishan Reddy, and Dr Jitendra Singh.
Basholi has 69,282 voters for the 2024 election, with 36,343 male voters, 32,937 female voters, and two transgender voters. There are 107 polling stations.
(With inputs from PTI)
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