Engineer Rashid Fails To Replicate Lok Sabha Success In J&K Assembly Elections

Only four months ago, Sheikh Abdul Rashid, known as Engineer Rashid, contested in the Lok Sabha elections from behind bars and made headlines by defying the odds. He won the Baramulla constituency with 472,481 votes, nearly double the tally of his nearest rivals, former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and Sajad Gani Lone of the People's Conference. 

Rashid had then taken a lead in 15 of the 18 assembly seats that fall within the Baramulla Lok Sabha constituency. However, Rashid, who was anticipated to change the poll dynamics in the Valley, failed to make an impact in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections.

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His party, the Awami Ittehad Party (AIP), won only one seat: Langate in north Kashmir, where Rashid's brother, Sheikh Khurshid, defeated Irfan Panditpuri of the People's Conference by a margin of 1,602 votes. Rashid had previously represented the seat as an independent candidate in 2008 and 2014.

Of the 36 AIP candidates, 31 lost their deposits. The collaboration with the Jamaat did not help either; none of the ten candidates supported by the Jamaat-e-Islami secured victory. 

A political observer said the reason behind AIP's setback was the perception that the BJP backed it to split the vote in the Kashmir Valley.

Throughout his campaign in the Assembly elections, Rashid was accused by rival parties of being released on interim bail and deployed by the BJP to cut into the votes of the National Conference (NC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). 

While Rashid denied the charge of being a “BJP proxy”, he was confident that he would win several seats. Despite denying these allegations, Rashid's extensive campaigning across south, central, and north Kashmir failed to translate into electoral success.

The Political observer added that there was also a wave of National Conference (NC) this time as people saw it as the strongest "Anti-BJP" option. 

“With Jammu expected to strongly back the BJP, Kashmiris saw this alliance as their best bet to counterbalance the dominant party. Consequently, other regional parties, including Mehbooba Mufti's PDP, performed poorly,” he argued.

Meanwhile, the NC-Congress alliance, which crossed the 46-seat majority mark by securing 49 seats, looks set to form the first government in Jammu and Kashmir in 10 years, with Omar Abdullah as chief minister.