NC, Congress candidates emerge victorious from Bandipora

Bandipora, Oct 8: Bandipora was all about the National Conference (NC) and Congress that clinched the north Kashmir district’s three constituencies - Gurez, Bandipora, and Sonawari.

The results of the first seat declared in J&K were of the winning of NC candidate and former MLA, Nazir Khan (Gurezi), who secured the win by bagging 8378 votes, defeating BJP’s Faqeer Muhammad Khan by 1132 votes.

Khan said his win was a defeat for those leaders “who campaigned against me in Gurez”.

He was referring to Defense Minister Rajnath Singh’s visit to Kashmir and other BJP leaders to support the BJP candidate, Faqeer Muhammad Khan.

“I fought against the entire BJP leadership,” Khan said. “This defeat is the defeat of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”

He said that they had money and power.

“In one rally they spend Rs 35 to 40 lakh. There was so much propaganda against me and even my personal life was affected,” Khan said.

In a neck-to-neck fight in the Bandipora constituency between independent candidate Usman Majid and Nizamuddin Bhat, who secured the mandate of Congress before the last day of filing nomination papers, Bhat emerged victorious by a winning margin of 811 votes.

Bhat bagged 20,391 votes while his closest rival Majid bagged 19,580 votes.

Senior NC leader Muhammad Akbar Lone’s son, Hilal Akbar Lone secured a win from Sonawari constituency bagging 31,535 votes.

Lone won by a margin of 13,744 votes defeating AIP’s Yasir Reshi who got 17,791 votes and Apni Party candidate Imtiyaz Parray who bagged 17,608 votes.