18 lakh voters across 18 assembly segments of Baramulla

Sopore, May 15: The Baramulla parliamentary constituency, which goes to polls on May 20, comprises 18 assembly constituencies, and after the delimitation, the total number of voters in the constituency is around 18 lakh.

This time, a total of 22 candidates are in the fray including former chief minister and National Conference (NC) Vice President Omar Abdullah, former minister and Peoples Conference (PC) Chairman Sajjad Gani Lone, former Rajya Sabha member and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader Mir Fayaz, former Member of Legislative Assembly Engineer Rasheed, Nationalist Peoples Front candidate and separatist leader Shabir Ahmad Shah’s brother, Muneer Ahmad Khan, and two independent female candidates Suraiya Nissar and Shafeeqa Begum.

From 1957 to 2019, NC candidates have won parliamentary elections held in the Baramulla constituency 10 times out of the total 15 times, Congress four times and PDP once.

However, after the delimitation, Budgam and Beerwah constituencies of central Kashmir’s Budgam district were added to the Baramulla parliamentary constituency, taking the number of assembly constituencies in the Baramulla Lok Sabha constituency to 18 while the number of voters is around 18 lakh.

In the 2019 parliamentary polls, NC’s Muhammad Akbar Lone won the seat securing 133,426 votes while People Conference’s Raja Aijaz Ali got 103,193 votes, Engineer Rashid, who fought the election as an independent candidate got 102,168 votes, PDP’s Abdul Qayyum Wani got 53,530 votes, and Haji Farooq Ahmad Mir of Congress gets 34,532 votes.