Big win for INDIA bloc fails to hide Congress’s failure in Jammu | India News – Times of India

SRINAGAR: The resounding mandate for the INDIA block in J&K failed to hide the Congress’s tame failure to live up to pre-poll expectations to take on the BJP in its Hindu stronghold of Jammu. The Congress won a sole seat in the Jammu region, that too through a minority candidate in the reserved Rajouri constituency. This is the worst performance of Congress in the region.
While the Congress won five seats in Kashmir, it was expected to give a boost to the alliance in Jammu, with better presence and appeal on the ground. Given the polarized nature of J&K post-2014, NC has taken a back seat while expecting Congress to fill the vacuum with Hindu voters. and the middle class. The Lok Sabha trends showed an improvement in the Congress’ position as the Lok Sabha candidates sharply reduced the victory margins of BJP nominees in the seats of Jammu and Udhampur.
With the Congress performing better nationally than predicted in the 2024 LS contest, the party began to believe that it was on a comeback and Jammu became its target. In the alliance with NC, Congress got seats to contest in Jammu. But hope fell apart. Ally and NC chief Omar Abdullah had warned during the campaign by publicly stating that the Congress was not focusing on Jammu, where it was expected to do the heavy lifting and thereby get the lion’s share of seats. “It doesn’t matter what the Congress does in Kashmir, what matters is how the Congress fares in Jammu,” Abdullah had bitterly remarked, criticizing the ally for wrongly focusing on Kashmir.
Congress working presidents Raman Bhalla and Tara Chand, former MP Lal Singh and former state president Vikar Rasool Wani, among others, failed to win, though some of them lost by smaller margins. The BJP immediately benefited from the Congress’s failure and increased its score to 29, the number of segments it led in the Lok Sabha polls.