J-K Assembly Polls: NC, Congress ‘seal’ alliance, yet some hurdles in seat-sharing remain. Details here

National Conference president Farooq Abdullah said on Thursday that a pre-poll alliance with the Congress party is final on all 90 Jammu and Kashmir assembly seats. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) is also expected to join this alliance.

Abdullah’s comments came after he and his son, Omar Abdullah, met with Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi in Srinagar. Earlier in the day, Gandhi, while addressing party workers in Srinagar, said that an alliance would be formed while maintaining the ‘respect of Congress workers.’

The three-phase assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir will begin with the first round for 24 seats on September 18. The other two rounds are scheduled for September 25 and October 1. The votes will be counted on October 4.

Farooq Abdullah said on Thursday that the alliance will be finalised by evening. Yet, a seat-sharing formula between the two parties has not been announced formally.

Hurdles in way of seat-sharing pact

As things stand, the two parties are working to sort out some hurdles on some seats before finalising any formula. The NC has a strong presence in Kashmir Valley, while the Congress is a bigger player in Jammu where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is also a major player.

"We have reached a consensus on most of the seats. We are adamant on some seats and regional Congress leaders are adamant on some seats. Today we will discuss again and try to bring the remaining seats within the alliance limit and announce our candidates," Omar Abdullah told news agency ANI on Friday.

The Congress party wants seats from Kashmir Valley, from where it has fielded candidates in past elections. The National Conference, on its part, is unwilling to concede some of these seats since it thinks it has been working on the ground for a long on these seats, a report in Indian Express said. 

INDIA bloc partners

Ever since the first assembly elections were held in Jammu and Kashmir in 1951, the National Conference (NC) and the Congress were the dominant parties in the erstwhile state until 2002 when Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's People's Democratic Party (PDP) emerged as a major political player for the first time.

The Congress and the NC are part of the opposition INDIA bloc at the national level. The two parties contested Lok Sabha elections 2024 together. The NC fielded three candidates in the Valley's seats, and the Congress fielded two candidates in Jammu as part of a pre-poll agreement. NC won two Valley seats, but Congress failed to win any seat in the 2024 general elections.

The NC won the 2008 Assembly elections, winning 28 seats. It formed a coalition government with the Congress, which had won 17 seats, in the then 87-member House that included Ladakh too. In 2019, Ladakh became a separate UT. The number of seats in Jammu and Kashmir was raised to 90 after delimitation in 2022.

Seats in Srinagar

Congress wants to contest at least 8 seats in Srinagar district. This includes seats like Hazratbal, which is considered an NC stronghold. The party has already shortlisted a candidate from here.

The Farooq Abdullah-led party is also not keen on giving the Congress party some seats in the Pulwama and Anantnag districts of Kashmir Valley.

Dooru seat in Anantnag, for example, was an NC stronghold from 1962 to 1996. In the 2002 and 2008 assembly polls, the seat was won by Ghulam Ahmad Mir, the former state Congress chief. In the 2014 polls, PDP Syed Farooq Andrabi won the seat.

The NC is ready to let Congress have an upper hand in the Jammu region, where the grand old party has a better presence than in the Kashmir Valley, where the NC thinks it is a major stakeholder.

The two parties are also discussing a ‘friendly’ fight on seats where an agreement remains elusive.