New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won 15 of the 26 seats and the Congress won nine seats in the elections to the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC). The elections were held on October 22 and the counting took place on Monday.
Independent candidates won two seats in the election, the first since Ladakh was made a Union Territory in August last year.
In this election, the BJP was five seats short of its tally in the last Council (elections to which were held in 2015), while the Congress had only six members in the last Council, according to the Indian Express. The Congress emerged victorious at nine places, wresting Lower and Upper Leh in Leh town from the BJP.
In the election held in 2010, the Congress had 22 seats, while the BJP had four.
The LAHDC, Leh is an autonomous district council that administers the Leh district of Ladakh. It has a total of 30 seats, with four councillors nominated by the government.
Since the formation of the hill council in 1995, the Congress had swept the polls thrice, while the Ladakh Union Territorial Front had won the elections in 2005.
The BJP wrested control of the council from the Congress for the first time in the last election.
The Kargil district of Ladakh had a separate hill council, which was elected in 2018 for a five-year term.
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Wins and losses
In Sakti, BJP’s Gyal P. Wangyal, who was the chief executive councillor of the last Hill Council, lost to Congress’s Rigzin Tsering.
However, the BJP won all five constituencies in the Nubra Valley. Chushul and Neoma in Eastern Lakakh, where India and China are in a standoff position, went to independent candidates, the Indian Express report said.
The National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party boycotted the electoral exercise to protest the reading down of Article 370. Therefore, in the absence of the two major regional parties, the BJP asked its local leadership to contest the elections, hoping it would be easier for them to win, a senior official in the UT’s administration told the Indian Express.
The National Conference had won two seats in the 2015 election.
A turnout of 65.07% was recorded in this election. The Aam Aadmi Party, which had contested for the first time, failed to open its account.
(With inputs from PTI)