Jammu: The first-ever elections for Ghulam Nabi Azad’s nascent Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) has proved disastrous as his party lost from all the three seats it contested with its candidates losing security deposits.
Azad’s most trusted and close aide Ghulam Muhammad Saroori lost badly from Udhampur parliamentary constituency.
Udhampur Lok Sabha seat is the home seat of former union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, who left Congress party in 2022 due to differences with Rahul Gandhi, and formed DPAP. But the results today showed that he hasn’t been able to get enough votes even from his native district for his party’s candidate.
Azad himself had unsuccessfully contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Udhampur seat on Congress mandate.
Saroori even lost in the Inderwal Assembly segment of Kishtwar district from where he had won three consecutive assembly elections. This time Saroori was at the third place in Inderwal with Choudhary Lal Singh of Congress getting highest votes followed by Dr. Jitendra Singh of BJP.
Since the beginning of Lok Sabha elections, DPAP has attracted the tag of playing as B-team of the ruling BJP and opposition parties like Congress and National Conference (NC) accused Azad of fielding candidates from Udhampur to cut secular votes which they claimed would have gone to the Congress candidate.
DPAP contested three out of five Lok Sabha seats of Jammu and Kashmir which included Udhampur, Anantnag-Rajouri and Srinagar.
There was nothing much either for the DPAP candidates of Anantnag-Rajouri and Srinagar seats — Muhammad Saleem Paray and Amir Ahmed Bhat respectively — to celebrate as both of them have also lost the security deposits. Paray grabbed 25,440 votes whereas Bhat got 15,104 votes only. (With inputs from KNO)
