Cross-Voting, 'Betrayal': Decoding Maths Behind BJP's Rajya Sabha Victory in J&K

Accusations and recriminations are flying thick in the anti-saffron camp of J&K in the wake of BJP's surprising win.

Understanding the arithmetic behind BJP's Rajya Sabha triumph in Jammu & Kashmir.

(Photo: X)

The Rajya Sabha election in Jammu & Kashmir was supposed to be an ordinary exercise of electing four new members to the Upper House of Parliament. The vacancies were occasioned because the incumbents on these four seats had completed their prescribed six-year term. Yet the polls have become mired in allegations of deceit, scheming and subterfuge after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) romped home one of the four regional Rajya Sabha seats in a Muslim-majority region, where the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference (NC) and the members of INDI Alliance already had an overwhelming numerical influence in the state legislature. 

This came as a surprise to everyone as such a victory would mean that the saffron party was able to cross the threshold figure required to win the seat by grabbing four additional votes than the party was expected to corral in its support.

With 28 MLAs, BJP’s share in the 90-seat J&K Legislative Assembly accounts for less than a third. So despite the clear odds, how did the party achieve this rare success?

Elections to Upper House are Complex

Unlike the Lok Sabha polls, where the representatives are chosen by the public through a ballot, the elections in the Upper House of India’s bicameral legislature is based on proportional representation by a single transferable vote (STV) cast by regional legislators. 

The voting is preferential, which means that the electors rate the candidates in ones, twos, threes and so on in the order of precedence wherein ‘one’ constitutes the first preference. The candidate who crosses the threshold or ‘quota’—which varies from region to region, and is determined by a particular formula—with the most ‘first preference’ votes is declared as the winner. [The ‘quota’ is calculated by dividing the number of electors by the number of seats + 1. Then, another 1 is added to the resultant number.]

If the desired number of winners are not drawn up in the first round, a second round is arranged, where the votes of those candidates that secured the least number of ‘first preference’ votes in the first round are nullified, and the ‘second preference’ votes from these ballots are counted, and one or more winners announced.

BJP vs INDIA Bloc

In J&K, the Election Commission had announced polling on the four seats via three separate notifications on 6 October earlier this month.

The NC had declared it was betting on the support from 59 MLAs, which included 41 of their own, six from Congress, three from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), one from the Communist Party, and eight from Aam Aadmi Party and other independents.

Zafar Choudhary, veteran journalist and author from Jammu

That the NC candidates would win the first and second seats was a foregone conclusion, as the party crossed the respective threshold of 44 and 43 votes with ease. In fact, it far exceeded its required quota by cornering 58 and 56 votes on the first and second seats respectively, securing important victories for its candidates Choudhary Ramzan and Sajjad Kichloo.

They were contesting against BJP’s Ali Muhammad Mir and Rakesh Kumar, who won 28 and 29 votes respectively. 

However, the battle toughened up in the third notification for which the Commission clubbed the polls for third and fourth seats. Here, the legislators could cast only a single vote instead of voting for two seats each, as per the Commission’s directions.

As the seats were merged under one notification, the threshold also went down to 30, based on the Commission’s formula. The NC’s candidate for the third seat was Gurvinder Singh Oberoi, a prominent Kashmiri Sikh politician and a long time associate of the current Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. 

Fighting on the fourth seat against the BJP’s state president and former MLA Sat Paul Sharma was Imran Nabi Dar, NC’s spokesperson. It was on this seat that BJP seems to have invested all its focus.

Senior sources in the NC told The Quint that they split their MLAs into two blocs, apportioning “enough” votes for both their candidates, and rallying external support from the other parties.

"While some (of the NC MLAs) would vote specifically for Oberoi, others would vote only for Dar. The shortfall of votes would be covered by the votes from allies,” a senior NC member said on condition of anonymity. But in what ways this support would be harnessed from the parties wasn't exactly clear, creating a critical opening for the BJP. 

The Muddled Electoral Strategies

Here’s the catch, though. The PDP had already instructed three of its MLAs to support Oberoi’s candidature a day before voting began, which could have given NC the leeway to siphon some of the votes from its pool for Dar. The NC, however, appears not to have done that. 

The results declared Dar as the loser with only 21 votes polled while Sharma clinched a surprising victory with 32. That is four more than 28, the total number of MLAs that the BJP has in the state legislature.

Oberoi, on the other hand, won the third seat by polling 31 votes, which suggests that one extra vote had been polled in his favour than was required. 

Of the 59 supporters that were purportedly on NC’s side—58 of which had faithfully polled for the NC candidate for the first seat, and 30 of which helped Oberoi win in the third—the party still had 29 unused numbers. That is one more than the BJP’s 28. 

"But they got 21 votes (on the lost seat) with the loss of seven. Of these, four went to the BJP, two got rejected because of incorrect marking, and one wasted by being polled in favour of Oberoi who ended up with 31 though he needed only 30 to win," Zafar Choudhary, veteran journalist and author from Jammu, tells The Quint.

This, Choudhary suggests, signalled that NC was less politically agile and calculating than its rival, the BJP.

The party should have kept its flock together, assigned polling agents to ensure that votes are cast in its favour, and offered comprehensive training programs to avert the possibility of votes being declared invalid. This is what BJP does nationally. This is what makes it an invincible machine during the elections.

Zafar Choudhary, veteran journalist and author from Jammu

No One Will Know Who Cross-Voted

The question that has been lingering in the minds of the people across the region is, who “betrayed” the local sentiments by polling in favour of the BJP? 

The answer is difficult to determine as the independent candidates are not required to show their ballot paper. The MLAs from other parties, too, are not obliged to show who they have voted for except to their authorised polling agents.

Since all the parties had come together under the banner of keeping the BJP out, the loss of the RS seat has sparked political anger in the erstwhile state, with accusations and recriminations flying back and forth between them. 

The PC headed by former Minister Sajad Gani Lone accused Omar of being in a “tacit understanding” with the BJP, and of putting all his eggs in (Oberoi’s) basket, thereby giving the Saffron party the fourth seat on a platter. 

Political experts in Kashmir, however, point out that the BJP’s strategy would have been ineffectual had it not been complemented by the Election Commission’s decision to merge the two votes under one notification. 

They (the Commission) seem to have facilitated this process. It would have been a fair game had there been four separate notifications for four seats.

Noor Ahmad Baba, former professor of political science at the University of Kashmir

Baba said that although the vulnerabilities of the regional political players like NC were not so severe at present, the episode nonetheless signals that BJP was capable of mobilising its resources “very well”, and that “NC will be more cautious for the future.”

(Shakir Mir is an independent journalist whose work delves into the intersection of conflict, politics, history and memory in J&K. He tweets at @shakirmir. This is an opinion piece. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)