SRINAGAR: For the second successive Vice-Presidential election, Jammu and Kashmir will have no representation from its Rajya Sabha members when the country votes for a new Vice President on September 9. The four seats allocated to the Union Territory in the Upper House have remained vacant since February 2021, first due to the absence of a Legislative Assembly and later for reasons yet to be made public.
The Election Commission on Friday announced that the 17th Vice Presidential election will be held on September 9. The formal notification will be issued on August 7, and candidates will have until August 21 to file their nomination papers. If a contest is required, polling will be conducted the same day between 10 am and 5 pm in Room Number F-101, Vasudha, on the first floor of the Parliament building. The results will be declared later in the evening.
The Vice President is elected by an electoral college comprising members of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. While all five Lok Sabha MPs from Jammu and Kashmir and the lone MP from Ladakh will be eligible to vote, no Rajya Sabha MP from J&K will be present in the electoral roll for the second time in a row.
The current Lok Sabha representation from Jammu and Kashmir includes Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh (Udhampur-Doda) and Jugal Kishore Sharma (Jammu-Reasi) from the BJP, Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi (Srinagar) and Mian Altaf Ahmed (Anantnag-Poonch-Rajouri) from the National Conference, and Independent MP Engineer Rashid from Baramulla. The lone Ladakh MP, Mohd Hanifa Jan, elected as an Independent last year, is politically aligned with the National Conference. BJP-nominated Rajya Sabha member Ghulam Ali Khatana, also from Jammu and Kashmir, will be able to vote as nominated members are eligible to participate.
The INDIA bloc, of which the National Conference is a constituent, has indicated plans to field a consensus candidate against the NDA nominee, though the final decision of the NC and Independent MP Engineer Rashid will be known only after the candidates are declared.
The last Vice Presidential election was held on August 6, 2022, and at that time, too, J&K’s Rajya Sabha seats were vacant. The four vacancies arose in February 2021 after the completion of the terms of PDP’s Fayaz Ahmad Mir and Nazir Ahmad Laway, BJP’s Shamsher Singh Manhas, and Congress’s Ghulam Nabi Azad. These members had been elected in February 2015 when the PDP-BJP alliance held a majority in the then state Assembly.
From February 2021 to October 2024, Rajya Sabha elections for these seats could not be held due to the absence of the Legislative Assembly, whose members elect Upper House MPs. Although Assembly elections were conducted in September-October 2024, the Rajya Sabha polls have not yet been scheduled, despite repeated demands from the ruling party and its allies.
Based on the current Assembly strength, the NC-Congress alliance is in a position to win three of the four seats, with the BJP likely to secure the remaining one. Following past practice, three notifications are expected for the four seats, one for two seats jointly and two separate notifications for one seat each. -(KL)
